


One More Time (With Feeling)

by indecentpause



Category: Original Work
Genre: Asexual Character, Biracial main character, Bisexual Character, Chicago, Disconnection from culture, Found Family, Gender-Neutral Pronouns, HIV/AIDS, Insomnia, Interracial Relationship, Late Night Conversations, M/M, Multi, Nonbinary Character, Polyamory (background relationship), Second person POV, Trans Female Character, Trans Male Character, a painter a musician a sculptor a street artist and an enigma, early 2000s probably, like I don't think anyone is cishet, lots of coffee, serodiscordant relationship, starving artists, street artist, transgender character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-31
Updated: 2018-08-03
Packaged: 2019-05-16 11:50:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 35,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14810805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indecentpause/pseuds/indecentpause
Summary: March Liu is a broke artist who wants love more than anything but can’t seem to hold onto a relationship because he’s trans and ace. Then a friend introduces him to Chayton, a free-spirited street artist, they get along like a house on fire, one thing leads to another, and suddenly March realizes he has a crush on someone absolutely unattainable. Again. But the closer March gets to Chayton, the less he seems to actually know. When Chayton’s biggest secret spills out in an argument, they have to take a break, and March isn’t sure they even have a friendship left anymore, much less potential for anything else.A love letter to my painting history and my city (Chicago).





	1. Chapter 1

Your name is March Liu, and your life is a bigger mess than the sheet you put down underneath your easel when you paint.

March. Great name, right? It could be worse. Your little brother’s name is Matcha. Yeah, like the tea. Your mom wasn’t even Japanese, she was Korean. But then, she’d always been a little weird. Maybe that’s where you got it. You can’t bring yourself to change it now, though, even though you could. Mom said she’d have given you that name regardless of your gender, so you feel kind of obligated to keep it. You know. In honor of her memory.

You’re back at the old art house again, after getting kicked out by yet another partner because you’re not into sex, and no matter how much people insist it’s okay, you’ll work it out, they never end up actually _wanting_ to work it out. Last you were here about a week ago, five people were living here and it was starting to get crowded, but things change so frequently it could be completely different now.

You unlock the door and let yourself in, wiping the sweat off your forehead with the back of your hand. You would get yourself kicked out without a bus pass in the middle of summer.

“Hello?” you call.

“’Ey, Rabbit! How are you?” A bright, smiling face with a messy mop of shaggy black hair pops out from behind the kitchen doorframe. Kyle. “I was just taking a break from my writing and making some lunch. Come on in!”

You drop your bags beside the door, all your belongings in the world shoved into two backpacks and a duffel. You wipe at your face after he disappears back into the kitchen and sigh before slogging over the slick hardwood floors and through the doorframe. All the doors have been removed except bedrooms and bathrooms and repurposed into coffee tables. There’s one in the living room painted with unicorns in astronaut helmets playing laser tag. The other ones sold for, like, at least $3,000 a piece. For a door with drawings on it and two bricks on either end. Hipsters will pay out the nose for anything as long as you call it art.

“What are you making?”

“I’m not sure yet.” Kyle’s brown eyes sparkle bright from his olive skin, like someone spilled glitter on his face. “I’m just putting things together until it tastes good.”

“Does it?” you ask. It has some kind of tomato sauce base and something that looks like lentils floating around. You stick your pinky finger in and put it in your mouth.

“Pinch of allspice and half a teaspoon of sugar and you’ll be good to go,” you say. Kyle laughs and ruffles your hair. You bat his hand away, but you’re laughing, too. He grins at you. His eyes shine.

He has beautiful eyes. Yours are nearly the same shade of brown but there’s something different about his, something that screams, “Paint me!“ and “Focal point!”

“Brilliant,” Kyle says, and as he turns around and reaches into the cabinet, Cricket walks in, trailing zir hand over Kyle’s back as zie passes him on zir way to the sink. Kyle isn’t tall enough to reach whatever he’s trying to get, but you’re both shorter than he is, so offering to help would be useless.

“Hey, Cricket,” you offer.

Cricket mumbles something you don’t catch. Zie yawns and ruffles zir hands through zir hair, then scratches at the back of zir neck. “Coffee first.”

Cricket looks like zie could be a character on Rainbow Brite, all the way from zir thin, 5’2” frame down to the tiny pink star tattooed on zir cheek. Zir hair is always some different shade of the rainbow and zir clothes always match it. Even though you’ve known zir for years, zie’s been dyeing zir hair longer, so you’ve never seen it its natural color. You’re not sure you even know what that is. It’s currently a pretty seafoam green. Last week it was bubblegum pink. Who knows what it will be next week, or even tomorrow.

Kyle finally manages to knock the spice tin down with his fingers and catch it in his other hand. He ruffles your prematurely silvering hair as he passes you to the pan and throws in a dash of the ground allspice.

“I could swear your hair’s greyer than it was last time.”

“ _Silver_ ,” you correct. “Grey is flat and dull and usually mixed with white. Mine’s shiny. And I wouldn’t be surprised; I’ve been under a ton of stress.”

“Well, stop it, or you’ll lose all your brown before you’re twenty-five.”

“Yeah, stop it,” you snort. “I’ll get on that.”

“What’s --”

“Can I stay on the couch a while?” you ask. “For… a while?” You repeat yourself because you have no idea what the time frame might be.

“Star and Minne moved out,” he says. “I’ve got a king now, and Lola and Cricket have moved into my room.” Cricket shoots you a thumbs up behind zir back. “So you can take mine. My old mattress is in the backyard. Lola was going to pull out the stuffing and use the springs for a project but I’m sure it’ll be okay if you bring it back in. What’s wrong? What happened with Jessie?”

“You know how she said she was cool with me being asexual?” you ask. Kyle’s face falls.

“Yeah…”

“She wasn’t cool with me being asexual,” you say.

“Again?” His brow knits together and his mouth turns down.

“Bitch.” Cricket covers it with a cough into zir hand, but not well.

“She also wanted me to go off my hormone treatments.” You sigh and brush your hair out of your face, away from your wire framed glasses.

“She _what_?” Kyle nearly drops the tin.

“ _Bitch_!” Cricket doesn’t try to hide the insult this time. “Is that why she broke up with you? Because obviously you didn’t go off them.”

“But she knew you were trans from the get go, right?”

“Another thing that didn’t matter that ended up mattering way too much,” you snort. “I’m not going to date for a while.” You pause. “So I can take the extra room?”

“It’s yours,” Kyle says. He curls his arm around your shoulder and leans in closer to your face. “As long as you need it, man, okay?”

Finally, you smile. His forehead bumps your temple when you nod, and you shrug away from him to gather your things and get situated as best you can.

 

* * *

 

You dump your bags in one corner and unpack and set up with what spare furniture you can find around the house and in the backyard. All you find are a small end table with a globe painted on top and a single red, three-shelf bookshelf, but you don’t own much, so you manage. You’ve moved in and out of so many places in the past two years you had no choice but to pare down to the essentials. You don’t even own an easel anymore. That honor belongs to the residents of the house and their small garage, which they turned into a studio, where you always came to work.

After zie gets some coffee in zir system, Cricket helps you move the mattress in. It’s only a little dirty. Once you get it in a good spot, you both go back out to the living room table to sit with Kyle and have some of his tomato and lentil concoction.

Cricket swallows a bite. “You know,” zie says, pointing at Kyle with his spoon, “before I met you, I always thought vegan food sucked, but you’re one of the best cooks I know and you don’t even use recipes.”

Kyle laughs away the compliment. His eyes sparkle. Maybe brown isn’t the word you’d use. It’s not specific enough. Taupe? That’s closer, even if it doesn’t sound as nice. Maybe burnt sienna. There’s almost a bit of red underneath the brown.

Cricket grins and takes Kyle’s hand, pressing a kiss to his palm. Zie buries zir nose there. “You smell delicious.”

***

Lola gets back from her day job at the junkyard as Kyle’s starting dinner. The first thing she does is grab you in a tight hug and pull your face against her chest like she’s comforting an infant.

“I guess Kyle told you the news,” you mumble.

“Yeah,” she says. “I’m so sorry, March. I know how much you liked her.”

You shrug and she lets you go.

“Sorry.” She gently pats your head and you look up at her angular, warm brown face. She pops the blue gum in her mouth, almost the same pale shade as her eyes. “I’m sure the last thing you need right now is being suffocated by tits.”

You laugh and shake your head. “I’m fine.”

She smiles and knuckles your neck, gently, just under your jaw, then looks back up and around the house.

“They’re in the kitchen,” you say.

“Thanks, babe,” she grins.

“Oh, and, I, uh, I live here, now,” you say. “So, later, if you three wanna… well, don’t worry about keeping me entertained and do whatever you want to do. I’m not a guest anymore.”

“You’re so cute,” Lola laughs, and she ruffles your hair like a big sister picking on her little brother. She hooks her own pastel streaked hair out of her face. It looks like a mermaid’s, with pale blues and greens and purples in her blonde curls.

“I took your mattress from the backyard, by the way.”

She waves your statement away. “No problem. I’m sure another will show up at the junkyard sometime soon. Can’t have you sleeping on the floor.”

* * *

 

After the initial excitement about moving in with your friends wears off, reality snaps back into your face like a backfiring slingshot. You’re unemployed. All you have is your freelance work, which is neither steady nor reliable. You’re still single, which, honestly, is probably better because nobody who says they love you is ever capable of actually doing so. It’s better to be single than to be lied to and misled. But even though you know the breakup was her problem and not yours, you can’t help but think, over and over in a cruel little circle, _What the hell is wrong with me?_

People notice you only come out of your room for food and the bathroom. They notice the lack of canvases in the garage, the clean, bare, concrete floor underneath the easel instead of your splotched up drop cloth. Every now and then, Cricket crawls into bed with you to talk, but you always end up lying in silence, side by side and staring at the icicle fairy lights hanging from the ceiling instead.

Finally, one day, you ask zir, “Have you thought any more about whether you’re going to start hormone therapy?” It’s blunt and to the point and maybe a little invasive, but it’s the only thing you have left to talk about.

“Nah,” zie says. “I don’t think I will. I think I just want top surgery. That’ll be good enough for me. I’m pretty much happy with the way my body is otherwise. How do you feel about it? You’ve been on about six months, right?”

“Mm,” you say. Your eyes dart over the twinkling fairy lights in the otherwise dim room. They’ve been your only source of light the entire time you’ve been in here. “One of the only good decisions I’ve ever made.”

Cricket snorts out a chuckle and you turn to look at zir. Zir round face is upturned, button nose pointed toward the ceiling. Zir long black lashes rest quietly on zir cheek, bright brown eyes closed. If Kyle’s eyes are burnt sienna, warm like firewood and gingerbread, Cricket’s are autumn bronze, cool and crisp like falling leaves.

“So,” zie says, “what’s going on? Because I feel like this isn’t actually about my transition, or lack thereof. It feels like you’re looking for an excuse to talk.”

You roll your eyes back up toward the ceiling. “I guess,” you say.

“Is this about the breakup?” zie asks.

“I guess,” you repeat.

“There’s nothing wrong with you,” zie says abruptly.

You sigh and close your eyes, letting your muscles go limp and sinking back into the bed, but not in relief. In defeat.

“Seriously,” zie says. “She was the one with the problem. Not you.” Zie pauses. The bed shifts and you open your eyes to see zir sitting up, looking down at your face. “You know, I think you just need to meet some new people without any romantic intention. I’m going to introduce you to my friend Chayton. I think you’d get along.”

“And Chayton is…?”

“He’s a street artist. You’ll have stuff to talk about. Maybe if you like each other you can go out with him one night.”

“Cricket --”

“For _art_ ,” Cricket stresses. “God. Like you can help him wheatpaste or whatever.”

You frown as you mull it over, but only for a moment. Going out wheatpasting _could_ be a lot of fun, if he’d have you.

“Yeah,” you finally say. “All right.”

“You’ll have to come out of your room,” Cricket warns.

“Yeah, yeah.”

“And probably take a shower.” Zie pulls a few strands of your hair through zir fingers. “Your hair’s getting kind of greasy.”

You sigh. “Yeah, I know. I’ve been pretty gross these past few days. Thanks for putting up with me.”

Zie nudges zir fist against your shoulder. “Always. We got you.”

* * *

 

The night passes and the morning comes. For the first time since you arrived at the house, you get out of bed and leave your room to head into the garage. Lola is out there, throwing paint at a canvas almost the size of the wall, and you set up in the opposite corner, far out of the way. All the clothes you own have paint on them somewhere, but still, better to make them last as long as you can.

You don’t talk while you paint. Lola has the stereo playing too loud, anyway. It’s been a while since you’ve done any painting, so you leave your brushes in their case and go at the canvas with just the paint and your hands. You know you shouldn’t. The chemicals could hurt you if you do this too much, but you can’t bring yourself to care about long-term consequences. It’s primal, almost animalistic: slashes of savage reds, blocks of midnight black, streaks and smears of lemon tart yellow and wineberry pink. Once the canvas is covered with the sharp, abstract shapes, you pull back and throw on splashes and splatters of waterfall and rivulet and electric blue.

By the time you’re done, there’s paint all over your shirt and a few smears on your face. You’re in up to your wrists in dozens of different colors. You take a step back, shaking your head to get your hair out of your face. It’s okay. Nowhere near close to your best, but then, it wasn’t supposed to be. You can always paint over it later when you actually have an idea.

The sink in the other corner is already covered in paint splatters and splotches of dry clay, so you don’t worry about leaving a handprint on the dial when you turn the water on. The warm water washing away the paint is like the embrace of an old friend, and you stare at the colors mingling and eventually turning brown as they reach the drain.

You don’t realize you’ve zoned out watching the water until Lola nudges your shoulder.

“You done?” she asks. You look down at your hands. They’re clean.

“Yeah.” You step to the side so she can wash her hands, too, and as you do, the door leading into the house creaks open behind you and Cricket pokes zir head out.

“Yo, March! Chayton’s here!”

You grab the towel by your sink and dry off your arms, then hand it off to Lola as she finishes washing her hands. You pass through the muck room and into the living room. Thetop of his shoulders and the back of his head poke up from behind the couch. One hand hangs over the armrest beside him. You gesture at him with your thumb and raise an eyebrow at Cricket. Zie rolls zir eyes and nods. Of course, who _else_ would be here sitting on your couch right now?

“Hey, Chayton,” Cricket chirps. Zie jumps over the back of the couch to sit down beside zir friend as you walk around it to their front.

“Hey,” Chayton says. He has one foot kicked up on the coffee table and the other leg tucked up against his chest, and he is beautiful.

He might be the most beautiful person you’ve ever seen. His long face and sharp nose are neither masculine nor feminine and his eyes are wider than any you’ve ever seen on a grown adult. They’re deep brown and call up memories of bare tree branches in the winter and smooth river stones and wet autumn leaves, something very old, but not jaded, in the way the seasons have been changing since the beginning of time but never seem to tire of each new cycle, even though he’s probably barely your age. His skin is warm brown with undertones of red and yellow, like fire burning underneath. Your hands itch for a sketchpad and something to draw with, a pencil, a pen, a fucking _crayon_ would do right now, because you need to get his face down on paper. Just in case you don’t get along and never see each other again, you want his face captured so you can look at it and remind yourself the world is fucking _beautiful_ as long as you know where to look.

“I’m March,” you finally manage. You hold out your hand. His palm is warm and fingers callused. When he pulls away there’s a flash of black on his fingertips. Ink stains? They disappear into his shaggy black hair when he hooks it back behind his left ear. It’s barely long enough to pull back into a ponytail, but he’s left it hanging loose.

“Like the March Hare?” Chayton asks.

“Yeah. Kyle calls me Rabbit, actually.”

“Hare _would_ be kind of a weird nickname.”

“Yeah.”

“Were you born in --”

“No. July.”

You both fall silent. Chayton looks away, at the foot propped up on the table. You glance around the living room and drop down in the chair beside him.

“You’ve got a little…”

You look up to see him rubbing his thumb on his left cheekbone. You mimic his movement, and your thumb comes away with splotches of crimson and firefly yellow.

“Shit,” you murmur, but you chuckle just the same. You wipe it off with your fingers and wipe your fingers on your jeans, covered in holes and paint smears already anyway. “Thanks,” you say.

“He’s an artist, obviously,” Cricket says. Chayton turns back to you.

“Yeah?”

You nod stupidly. From behind Chayton, Cricket mimes like zie’s nudging you forward. _Keep going_. “I went to art school because I’ve never made a practical decision in my life,” you joke, but something on Chayton’s face changes, like he’s bored suddenly. His eyes go a little dull before he pulls his expression back.

“Oh,” is all he says.

“I mostly paint,” you offer lamely, but it’s pretty clear he’s no longer interested in you. “But I do a little sculpture sometimes, too.” You need to stop talking. He obviously doesn’t care. Change the subject, idiot! “Cricket tells me you’re an artist, too?”

“I dabble,” he shrugs.

“So zie said,” you say. “It sounds interesting. Do you think, if I stayed out of the way, I could come with and watch you sometime?”

Chayton purses his lips at you as his brow furrows in thought. He glances over at Cricket, who nods and gestures back at you. “He’s good. You can trust him. I’ve known him forever. I can vouch.”

When he looks back at you, the sparkle is back in his cherrywood eyes. “All right,” he says. “I’m actually planning on going out tonight. Think you can keep up, Art School?”

You grin crookedly at the challenge in his voice.

“I think I can manage.”


	2. Chapter 2

The night is humid and heavy and weighs every part of your body down. Your clothes soak it up, sticking hot and damp to your skin. The streetlights beam against the heavy blackness overhead.

Chayton told you to meet him under the Harlem Green Line stop, so here you are, in the tiny train station beside the turnstiles. The little convenience store is closed, or you’d buy yourself a cup of coffee.

Oak Park is small and quiet and pretty and there aren’t a large number of flat places where he could paint or wheatpaste or whatever he does, unless he’s thinking of the side of the old bookstore that closed down a few years back and never got bought up again. But it’s full of windows and right in view of the street, and even though it’s past eleven, Chicago and its surrounding towns never truly go to sleep. There are always people out somewhere.

You jump at the sudden pressure of hands dropping on your shoulders. Your heart leaps into your mouth and you pull away and whirl around to see a bright, amused grin on Chayton’s face.

“Jumpy?”

“I think getting grabbed in the middle of the night is a good reason to jump,” you huff. You hadn’t even heard him come up behind you. He adjusts the backpack strap thrown over his right shoulder and says, “You brought gloves, yeah?”

You pull a pair of black gloves out of your pocket.

“Good,” he says. “Put them on and follow me.”

He pushes out the station door and makes a sharp left toward the street. So he’s _not_ going toward the old bookstore. He dances you around to you don’t know where, and it strikes you: if he were to try to murder you, you wouldn’t know where to run. But that’s crazy. _Come on, March,_ you think, _be serious here_.

“Where are we going?” Your voice is a low whisper. A light suddenly comes on down the street and he pulls you into a little nook between two buildings. You freeze, holding your breath until the car drives by and goes through the stoplight.

“Originally I was going to be in the city,” Chayton says, “but when you asked to come along I figured we’d relocate here because it’s quiet and safe and there’s not much activity this late. The only places around here around here are the little shopping areas and the Frank Lloyd Wright houses --”

“You can’t --”

“Oh, God no,” he interrupts. “I’d never dream of painting up one of them. They’re fucking _art_. We’re hitting the back of the Starbucks plaza.”

He pulls you out of the little niche and leads you around the corner. His hands are also gloved and burning hot in yours. Your palms sweat. The hair at the base of your skull sticks to your neck and your heart pounds deep and primal in your chest like a bass drum.

He takes you past the Starbucks and down about ten feet, an approximation of the space between the Whole Foods and the shoe store. His backpack clatters in the quiet night when he drops it to the pavement and crouches down to dig through it. He shoves a rolled up poster into your hands and you stand there dumbly, holding it and staring while he digs out a large paintbrush and a container of homemade wheatpaste.

“Unroll it,” he says. He finally looks up at you, amusement sparkling in his dark autumn eyes. You do. It’s about the size of two pieces of standard printer paper, a plain brown background with a pink tentacle-y alien creature with dozens of eyes looking in every direction.

The wheatpaste brush clatters when he drops it back into the container and he snatches the poster out of your hands. He slaps it up and smoothes it down expertly. His movements are so clean, precise, calculated down to the most minute detail of where his hands need to be and when. He paints another layer of paste over it and pulls out a box cutter, then slices the poster diagonally six times in each direction.

“That’s going to be impossible to get off,” you murmur.

“Exactly,” he whispers. He pulls a sticker out of his pocket and sticks it down in the left corner, applies another coat of paste over that, slashes an ‘x’ through the middle, and starts to pack everything up. From start to finish, it took less than a minute. _Impressive_.

The sticker catches your eye as you rush by. It’s a small black and white stencil of a tiger’s face. You know that calling card.

You open your mouth to ask him if it’s really his, but he’s already gone to his next space. He shoves another poster into your hands, and this time you unroll it without being asked.

“That sticker you put up, is that yours?” you ask.

“Yeah.” He slaps a coat of paste onto the bricks and grabs the poster, going through the process again.

“You’re _Tigertail_?”

“It’s our secret,” he says. He’s already applying the sticker in the corner. He slashes an ‘x’ through it and moves on around the corner, where the pet store is. You follow.

“I love your work,” you say. You’re already breathless, and you’re not sure whether it’s from running after being so out of shape for so long or if it’s because you’re about to hyperventilate because you’re standing in front of one of your favorite local street artists and _helping him with his work_.

“Thanks,” he says. Another poster in your hands.

“No, I mean, that stencil with all the hands you did on the corner of North and Narragansett? That’s one of my favorite street pieces.”

He grabs the poster.

“Okay, Art School, that’s sweet and everything, and I’m flattered, but you can fawn over me later when we go out for coffee. Right now we have to focus.”

“Yeah, yeah,” you say. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay. Just keep doing what you’re doing.”

Another ‘x’ through his calling card and you move on.

* * *

 

You must have pasted up ten posters tonight, all the same alien but in different colors and with different facial expressions. As soon as you were done, you booked it out of Oak Park and hopped the train to the Brown Line in the loop, which brought you to Southport instead. Chayton is as cool and collected as you’ve ever seen him, knocked back on two chair legs and rocking himself with his heels as he sips at his coffee (black Americano). _You_ are vibrating with adrenaline and excitement. Your head darts around the little café, only a short bus ride and a train stop away from your house. How did you not find this place until now? It’s true it’s tucked into a little corner around the alleyway, but somebody you hang out with should have known about it, especially since they’re open until 3:00 a.m.

Chayton’s hoodie is half-draped over the back of his chair, one cuff dragging on the floor. It’s the same dark blue as his t-shirt. At one point when you weren’t looking, he swapped out his black gloves for black and pink striped fingerless ones. His fingers tense and untense, involuntary twitches against the paper cup. His perfectly shaped and cut nails, with little flecks of paint underneath, scratch against the thin cardboard. A breath of steam rises up from his coffee and every now and then, he purses his lips and blows it away.

Hanging fairy lights offer most of the lighting, soft and low. They’re just enough to make out the menu behind the order counter. The green and blue bounce off of Chayton’s face, his cheekbones, the angle of his nose, softening the sharp lines, and in the dim light, his eyes and lashes look so much darker.

He takes a sip of his Americano and his eyes slip closed, and you take a photo with your mind, because this is perfect, this is exactly what a model should be able to look like.

“You’ve been awfully quiet,” he says. He puts his coffee down and leans his chair forward as somebody tries to slip by behind him. The round table you share is small, and if you were to both cross your arms on either side, your elbows could probably touch.

“Sorry.” It comes out as an unsure chuckle. “I just… you’re…” You gesture out to him, palms up, like an offering, and you squeak like an excited child.

“I’m just a guy who thinks art shouldn’t be confined to galleries and wealth, that’s all.”

A light bulb of realization flickers in your head.

“That’s why you made that face at me when I said I went to art school,” you say.

He looks up from his cup, fingers tapping against the cardboard sleeve. “Hm?”

“When I said I’d gone to art school you suddenly looked like you had a bad taste in your mouth.”

“No I didn’t.”

“Yeah, you did.”

“No.”

“Yes. I know what I saw. You thought I was some pretentious art snob of a rich kid, didn’t you?”

“ _No_ ,” he argues, but he’s laughing.

“Yes.”

He pauses. “Yes,” he finally says.

“Well, I can’t say I’m not a little pretentious, but I can guarantee you I’ll never be rich enough to be a snob.”

He laughs.

“So,” you grin, “what do you think of me, now?”

“I think if you wanted to come out again sometime, I’d love to have you with me,” he says, and your heart nearly pops like a too-full balloon in your chest.

“I’d love that, too,” you say softly. He takes another sip of his coffee and you finally take the lid off yours. You’ve never liked straws. And hiding your smile is easier when you have a cup lip to put it in. The ice bumps against your mouth and the cold espresso and soymilk help wake you back up. Tonight has been the most excitement you can remember having since you were a child living with your mom, but it’s almost 1:00 a.m. and that’s _late_.

“Do you need to be anywhere tomorrow morning?” Chayton asks.

You shake your head. He smiles and snaps his lid back on his coffee.

“Come with me,” he says. He stands and slides his hoodie on. “I want to show you something. The train around the corner should still be running a little while longer.”

You snap the lid back on your own drink and follow him out of the coffee shop. As you turn the corner to head into the train station, he slaps a palm-sized sticker of an elephant wearing shades and playing a saxophone on the wall.

“It’ll be gone in a couple of days,” he says, “but maybe in the meantime it can make someone smile.”

The train rumbles by overhead as you tap your bus passes against the sensor and slip through the turnstile, but you don’t know where you’re going so you don’t know if the train is yours. As Chayton steps inside behind you, he gently pushes you forward. “That’s us!” he says. “If we run, we might be able to catch it!”

The pounding of your feet up the concrete stairs is almost as hard as the pounding of your heart in your chest. You make it up, but the doors are closed, and you sprint to the side of the train car and tap on it, hoping the conductor sees you. He doesn’t, and the train pulls away.

“We’ll get the next one,” Chayton says. You drop to the bench beside the doorway, shoulders heaving, and when you look up at him he’s barely even breathing heavy, even with the backpack he lugged up with him. You push your crooked glasses back into place, and when you finally catch your breath, a burst of laughter puffs through your lips.

“I haven’t run like that since I was in school and about to miss the train.”

“Did you catch it?”

“Not usually.”

Chayton laughs, bright and warm, like his skin, like his eyes, like the yellow lamplight throwing shining highlights off his hair. You grin, and you laugh, too, and you take another mental snapshot.

About ten minutes later, the next train finally comes by, and you both hop on the closest car. It’s empty.

“Perfect,” Chayton says. He pauses, one hand high on the overhead bar, and looks left, then right, then rolls his eyes up to the ceiling.

“This side,” he says, gesturing over to the right. You plop down in one of the forward facing seats, and he drops down in front of you.

“I don’t have cooties,” you joke.

He props himself up against the wall and turns to grin at you. “I know. But we both need to be able to see through the windows.”

He pulls out another sticker from his pocket, a smaller one, this time, of a black and white stencil of a robot holding a sign that says, “Peace!” He peels it off and sticks it to the back of the seat in front of him, perfectly flat with no lines or bubbles, and crumples up the backing and slips it in his pocket.

“How far is it?” you ask. You leave the lid on your coffee this time, so the bumping train doesn’t spill it down your front. You take a sip. He throws his left arm over the headrest of his seat and pulls his knees up, balancing his coffee cup on them with his other hand.

“Not very,” he says. “This is the brown line, so… we want to start paying attention at the Armitage stop. So not far. Two or three from now.” The train comes to a stop and the automated voice announces that you’ve reached Fullerton. “Or one,” he chuckles. He takes a sip of his coffee and sits up straight, gesturing for you to look out the window. “Just watch,” he says.

At first, it isn’t much. The back of the station, the wall beside the train. But as you get higher up, lights start to flicker, first only one or two shops here and there. Then, you start getting closer to the city, and more come out, and more, like a million fireflies or a cauldron full of stars. Your breath catches at the bright sparkling between the silence and the darkness. Your mom always said the city could never be as beautiful as a country sky full of stars. She’d never seen the city like this.

Most of the lights are white and yellow, but there are a few scattered blue or red and sometimes the bright green of a lone stoplight. As you arrive at each stop, the scenery is temporarily hidden behind the wall of the station, but that makes it even more beautiful when you reach out into the open air again.

If you could know you’d never collide, you’d jump into the blackness and be happy falling forever, surrounded by stars.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come visit me on [Tumblr](http://indecentpause.tumblr.com/) for short stories, Sheraton Academy, Three Wishes, writing memes, and other cool stuff!


	3. Chapter 3

You’re not sure when you got home and went to bed, but you wake up at home the next morning shirtless, with your hair in disarray, and your blanket tangled up around your legs. You jerk up so hard you topple off the bed. But you don’t wait to catch your breath, you jump up, sliding on your glasses and grabbing the first shirt in the little pile by the door. You pull it over your head as you make your way down the hallway, through the living room, the muck room, into the garage. You flip the light on and open the door to let out all the fumes you’re going to make. It’s still dark outside, quiet and soft.

Your canvases are in the back left corner, away from Lola’s so they don’t get confused. You dive into the messy pile and start digging for one in the right size. You want it _big_.

Finally, you decide on one about as long as you are tall and two feet or so high, thin and narrow. _Perfect_. It’s much too big for your easel so you spread your dropcloth out to its full size and lie the canvas down on the floor. You prime it with a coat of black, and before it dries, another, thicker one up top so it can drip down the front. Then, once it dries, another dripping layer of pearl star yellow, one of ivory, one of marigold. You want texture and substance and something you could bite into, layers so thick onlookers have to chew their way out. Once it dries, you sketch out a skyline with a white conté crayon, then drop it in your bucket of sketching odds and ends before going back to your paint. It’s not the Chicago skyline, it’s not even what you saw yesterday, it’s just… a place you see in your head sometimes and couldn’t figure out how to put down until last night.

The buildings shiver and bend and curl on the canvas, never still, never static, and each layer and each color brings each one more to life, gives each one its own personality. You keep it dark and dim, wrought iron gray and midnight blue, and then for each light, something warmer, yellows and oranges and pinks, but dim and pale and light, barely tinted ivory white.

At some point, the sun has come up, and now it hangs high up in the sky, illuminating your workspace with bright natural light. The colors are a little brighter, a little more pure, and it makes you realize, _you need more purples_ , so back to your paint box and pallet you go.

Hours pass you by as you work in the garage, alone. Occasionally a car or two will drive by outside, and the pipes clanging and banging and the light above you humming and the thunk of your knees on the concrete are loud but easy to ignore when you get wrapped up in your work.

The stray cat that comes around your house sometimes is suddenly beside you, rubbing up against your leg and purring. You look down at her and grin.

“Hey, Schatzi." You hold up your hands, covered in splotches and streaks of paint. “I’d pet you, but, you know. I’m a slob.” But of course, she says nothing, and seems content to simply sit beside you and watch you paint.

You spend most of the day out there, alone with Schatzi the stray tortie, only going in once or twice to get something for both of you to drink and to find some food for her while you wait for the paint to dry in between layers. Finally, finally, you lay down the last stroke and you wash your hands, then check the time on your phone in your pocket.

3:24. _Oh my God._ If you came out when it was still dark, it would have been before 6:00. You’ve been working at least nine and a half hours, maybe longer. You brush your hair out of your face and wipe the sweat off your forehead with the back of your hand. Your knees pop and crack when you stand to prop up your canvas against the wall to dry. When you go back inside, the air conditioning is like ice after being out in the humid heat of the stuffy garage for so long. Schatzi trots inside after you. You don’t usually let her inside, but it’s so _hot_ out. Just this once.

Kyle is on the couch with his acoustic guitar, scribbling something down in the blank sheet music of his notebook. Cricket sits on the floor beside him, legs stretched long underneath the coffee table as zie leans on the couch. Lola’s head is in zir lap, sleeping quietly as zie plays with her hair. Schatzi prances up and curls up in front of her stomach.

“Where have you been all day?” Cricket asks. “I went into your room this morning to drag you out of bed and lo, you had already dragged yourself.”

You laugh. “In the garage, working,” you say. Kyle hums around the guitar pick between his lips.

“So going out last night _did_ do you some good,” Cricket says. “I’m glad.” Zie leans forward to scratch Schatzi behind the ears. Lola grunts softly, but doesn’t wake. Zie frowns. “You, my furry friend, are covered in dust and need a bath.”

“It was the most fun I’ve had in ages,” you say. “He invited me out again. I don’t know when. He wants to stay out of the city with me until I get faster, and I’m sure he has work to do there in the meantime.”

“Who?” Kyle moves the pick to his teeth.

“Chayton,” Cricket says.

Kyle hums in acknowledgement and scribbles down a note in the margin. Lyrics, probably. He takes the pick from his mouth and strums a few chords. He frowns at the last one and erases the last couple of notes in his book. “That’s pretty cool, man. Not many people get to go out with their heroes like that.”

“What?”

“I mean, you’ve been a fan of Tigertail’s for years, and last night you got to go out and help him with his work? That’s the _dream_.”

“You knew who he was?”

He looks up at you for a moment, then back down at his book. “You didn’t?”

“The only one, apparently,” you mumble.

“I didn’t want you to freak out,” Cricket says.

“I wouldn’t have --”

“You would,” zie interrupts. You pause. Only Schatzi’s purring breaks the silence. Cricket scratches her under the chin and she purrs louder. Lola shifts and her eyes start to flutter open as she mumbles incoherently with sleep.

“I would,” you finally concede. You chuckle and shake your head. “I totally would have. I hope I didn’t sound too stupid when I found out.”

“I think you’re fine,” Cricket says. You hike an eyebrow. “I texted him this morning,” zie admits. “To see how it went.”

“And?”

“And he thinks you’re adorable.”

“Who thinks March is adorable?” Lola mumbles. She sits up, bumping against Schatzi, who hops into Cricket’s lap. “I mean, they’re right, but I want to know!”

“Chayton,” zie says, as zie absently starts to scratch Schatzi’s neck.

Lola yawns and shoots you a thumbs up.

You roll your eyes and stick out your tongue.

“He’s never met a fan before. He keeps himself pretty tightly under wraps.”

“Then why’d he let me go with him last night?” you ask.

“I asked him the same thing,” Cricket says. “Even though I vouched for you, I was still pretty surprised when he said yes.”

You gesture for zir to continue. “Yes, and?”

“Well, yesterday he kind of just wanted to put you in your place,” Cricket laughs. “He has a thing about higher education and professional artists and students.”

You snort a little, but you laugh.

“But this morning he said it was the most fun he’d had going out in a while.”

“Yeah?” you grin. Chayton _approves_ of you. Not that you need anyone to validate you, but after the breakup… it’s still nice to know people can like you. You can make a good impression, you can get along with others. It helps.

“Yeah,” Cricket grins back.

“You have paint on your face, by the way.” Kyle’s words come out muffled around the pick in his teeth, but his amused grin is clear.

You laugh and wipe it off with the hem of your shirt. “When do I not?”

“I haven’t seen you smile like that in a while.” He pulls the pick out of his mouth and goes back to strumming experimentally at his guitar. “I missed it.”

Your smile softens, but doesn’t dim.

“I’m going to go clean up,” you say. You turn away, then halfway back around again.

“Do you think he’d like my work?” you ask. Cricket hikes an eyebrow and smirks. Zie grabs zir phone from the table and Schatzi hops out of zir lap when zie leans forward. Zie shoots off a quick text.

“Well?” you push.

“I’ll invite him over later and we’ll see.”

* * *

 

After you shower, you hole up in your room with the door closed and the window open, a sketchpad balanced on your folded up knees, a piece of charcoal in your fingers and a pencil behind your ear. A small, ink-stained wooden box sits beside you, full of pencils of various hardness and inks of various colors, pens and charcoal and conté crayon. Every now and then you rip off a piece of the newspaper on your other side and roll it into a stick to use for blending. A few hours later, you have three sketches of Chayton from yesterday: sitting on the couch with his legs curled up, at the coffee shop under the fairy lights, and on the train balancing a cup of coffee on his knee. You sign and date them, even though nobody else will ever see. These are just for you. You’re careful closing the sketch pad so you don’t smudge the charcoal. Graphite probably would have been more practical, but charcoal better captures the shadow and light that danced over his warm brown skin under the fairy lights, the playful sparkle in his eyes when he first called you Art School. You’ll spray them down with fixative later.

The light outside has started to dim when you finally fall out of focus enough to pay attention to your surroundings, so you stand and go to the other side of the room to flip the light on. You leave it, even as you leave the room for now.

“Rabbit!” The call for you comes from the kitchen as you approach, and you poke your head through the doorframe.

“Yeah?”

Kyle stands up from where he’s bent behind the refrigerator door. “Oh, hey, I didn’t realize you were there.” He closes the door. There’s a carton of soymilk in his hand. “Dinner’s about ready, if you’re hungry. I made pizza.”

“Please tell me you didn’t use vegan cheese.”

“Only on one,” he says. “You know, you’re one of only two vegans I know who don’t like it.”

You shrug. He pours himself a glass of soymilk and dumps in at least a quarter cup of chocolate milk mix. “Could you go grab Lola and Cricket? I’m pretty sure they’re in the bedroom.”

“Yeah.” You grab one of the garlic toast slices out of the basket on the counter and turn around.

“Knock first!” he calls after you. You laugh around the toast in your mouth and nod, even though he can’t see you anymore.

* * *

 

The four of you sit down to eat when a knock comes at the door.

“I’ll bet that’s Chayton,” Cricket says. “Just in time for food! I’ll get it.”

* * *

 

You all bunker down on the floor, kneeling and crosslegged, with no individual plates, just one for serving each of the three pizzas and a roll of paper towels to eat over. Everyone takes turns telling stories and unintentionally interrupting each other, and everyone’s laughing and grinning and getting pizza sauce all over the place, but you’re all wearing paint and ink stained clothes anyway, so it doesn’t matter. Chayton’s green shirt has a big, amorphous black blob on the front and you can’t tell whether it was an accident or if he meant to put it there. That describes most things in your life, actually.

“So, Art School,” Chayton says once he finishes his last bite of pizza, “Cricket tells me I should check out your work. Do you have anything you’re willing to show?”

Suddenly, you go shy. The confidence you’ve always had in your work disappears and you’re an awkward, unsure, first-term freshman again. What if he hates it? What if he hates it _and_ loses respect for you because of it?

You’re being ridiculous again.

“Well,” you say, “I’ve sold most of my paintings and I lost a lot of my other work in my recent… move, but I have some sketchbooks with concept art, if you want to look.”

“Yeah,” Chayton says. You stand and start to pick up the plates. Lola slaps your hands away.

“We’ve got it,” she says.

“Okay. Chayton, I, uh, keep most of my stuff in my room.”

He follows you into your room, looking around at the sparse space.

“It’s… nice,” he says. You turn around, walking backwards toward the little bookshelf near your bed.

“Lies don’t look good on you,” you say. “It’s crap, I know. But I’m working on it.”

He laughs. “I have a bean bag chair I never use if you want it.”

“Yeah!”

He laughs again, but not mocking. Pleased. Amused.

“You have a laptop or something squirreled away somewhere, right? I hope?”

You gesture vagely at the bookshelf. “On the bottom shelf.”

He glances over and nods. “Just making sure. I couldn’t imagine working without mine.”

You smile, and suddenly you’re not so nervous anymore.

Your sketchbooks are stacked haphazardly on the middle shelf, and you grab the two on the top and toss them on the bed. “Help yourself,” you say. Your voice is a little too high pitched. Just because you’re not _as_ nervous doesn’t mean you’re not nervous _at all_. “It’s a mishmash of things,” you say. He picks up the sketchbook on top and slowly flips through, stopping to focus on one page or another for a bit longer every now and then. “It’s, um, some sketches, some portraits, some concepts for paintings or sculptures. A little bit of… “ But you trail off, because you’re starting to repeat yourself. He gets to the middle of the book and frowns, then angles it to show you the pages. There’s a space where a good number have been ripped out, leaving just the margins behind.

“What happened here?” he asks.

“I, uh, my girlfriend… ex-girlfriend… there was a break up and she said some pretty cruel things. I didn’t want remnants of her laying around.”

“That sucks,” he says. He turns the page and doesn’t say anything more.

“You can sit down if you want,” you say. You pick up the other sketchbook, moving it to the side, pick it up again and hold it against your chest.

Chayton sits at the foot of your bed. The old box spring creaks under his weight.

“I’m going to be right back,” you say. You put the sketchbook back down and take a step backward. “Um. Help yourself to looking at whatever. I’ll just be a minute.”

He nods, distracted, as if he’s barely heard you. You duck out, closing the door only halfway behind you so as not to make him feel cornered, like you would. Once you’re out of view, you slap your hands over your mouth, pacing back and forth for a few seconds. What is wrong with you? You haven’t felt like this since you were at school working for a diploma, but this feels so much more important than a grade ever did. God, March, he’s just a guy! Who cares if he’s your idol and he’s sitting in your bedroom looking at your work oh God oh God oh _God_. You gently smack your own cheeks a few times and take a deep breath. You run into the kitchen for a glass of water, and then you can’t stall anymore, so you head back.

When you re-enter the bedroom, Chayton is still sitting crosslegged on the foot of your bed, but he must have gotten up at one point, because he’s flipping through a different sketchpad. The black one. The personal one. _The one with the drawings of him in it_. Oh no.

A small, quiet noise of distress tumbles from between your lips and he looks up. You can’t read the expression on his face.

“When did you draw these?” he asks.

“Which ones?”

His mouth twists and he gives you a look that says, _Really?_

“Earlier this afternoon,” you admit.

“From memory.”

You swallow. You nod. You put your glass down on the little red bookshelf and cross your arms protectively over your chest.

“They’re _good_ ,” he says. His voice is soft, maybe even a little awed? But you can’t be sure; your pulse is pounding too hard in your ears for you to hear properly.

“Thank you,” you squeak. You clear your throat into your hand and leave it there, curled up in front of your mouth. Your fingers tighten in your palm. “I’m sorry,” you finally stammer, “I probably should have asked your permission. I wasn’t planning on showing them to anyone.”

“Why not?”

“That book’s kind of… it’s just for me. For things I want to remember.”

“Who’s the woman in all the ones in the front?” He’s still looking at the sketchbook. He hasn’t turned the page since you walked back in.

“My mom.”

“Are you close?”

“We were.”

“Estranged?”

“No,” you say softly. “She, uh. She died. When I was nineteen.”

Chayton finally closes the sketchbook and places it to the side. “I’m sorry,” he says, and it’s not an apology, not really, it’s a ‘that’s awful and I don’t know what to say.’ But he doesn’t have to. You can see it on his face.

“Why did you draw me in here?” he asks. You’re grateful for the subject change. You can talk about your mom, but not like this, not taken off guard in a personal moment.

“What do you mean?”

“You said this is a book of things you want to remember. So why am I in here?”

“In case… in case you changed your mind this morning and didn’t want to see me again.” You finally drop your hand away from your mouth and grip your elbow instead.

“Why would I do that?”

“Why wouldn’t you?” It comes out before you have a chance to think. You flinch at how needy it sounds. He frowns and opens his mouth, but you speak first. “Sorry,” you say. “I mean, I don’t have the best track record with… people. And last night was the most fun I’ve had in years. The most alive I’ve felt since my mom died. I wanted some record of that.”

You pause. Chayton doesn’t speak.

“She used to take me and my brother guerilla gardening,” you say. “We’d make these clay balls with dirt and seeds and drive through the city throwing them at parks and planters and things. She always said the city wasn’t green enough.”

Finally, Chayton smiles. “That’s awesome,” he says. “I like that a lot.”

“So did I,” you say.

“You still close with your brother?”

“Not really.” All this time later, you’re finally able to get your feet to move. You sit on the bed beside him, shoulder to shoulder but not quite touching. “He lives on a commune in Wyoming now. He sends me a jar of homemade kimchi every Christmas, though.”

Chayton laughs. You chuckle, too.

You talk for a while, lying side by side with your knees hanging off the bed. You talk about your family, about art, about music, about your work and his. Finally, eventually, you work up the courage to ask, “What about your family?”

“What about them?”

You pause, unsure of where to take the conversation. “Anything, really. Or nothing at all.”

“Let’s go with nothing at all.”

“Fair enough.”

You did only meet yesterday, after all.

* * *

 

Chayton stays late into the night. With the broken air vent, eventually your room gets to be too stuffy, so you relocate out to the backyard, where you lie on the grass amongst the peppermint and basil Kyle plants and overruns the grass with every year. The bright, fresh smell of the crushed herbs underneath your shoulders and backs wafts past your heads and into the hot night, humid and sticky but with a nice breeze to keep you from getting too overheated. You can’t see much of the stars overhead past the streetlights, but you can imagine, and that’s enough.

You don’t want to go to bed; you want to stay there under the ebony and blackberry night sky forever, surrounded by the smell of mint and the damp grass cooling your back through your shirt, just talking. Maybe even saying nothing at all. But even though the bus back to the blue line runs late, it doesn’t run all night, so eventually Chayton has to leave, because he didn’t bring his bike and the distance is too far to walk.

“Cricket gave me your number,” he says. You’re leaning against the doorframe on one shoulder as he stands on the doorstep in front of you. “I hope that’s okay.”

You laugh. “That’s fine. I’d have done it myself last night, but there was a lot going on and it slipped my mind.”

“Yeah,” he says. A pause. “Do you have your phone on you?”

“It’s back in my room.”

“I’ll send you a text, then. Text me when you’re free. We’ll go out again soon, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

He smiles and offers you a loose salute, then turns around.

“Chayton?” you call after him.

He looks over his shoulder.

“Thank you.”

“For what?” he asks.

“For…” you start. _For giving me a chance last night. For reminding me most people are good. For not freaking out when you found the drawings. For wanting to see me again._ But you don’t say any of those things. Instead, you shake your head and say, “Never mind. I’ll text you tomorrow.”

“If you want to call wait until after eleven or so,” he says. “I’m usually up by then.”

That night, you dream of peppermint and desert brown eyes and stars.


	4. Chapter 4

You’re not up until almost noon the next day. The music blaring in the garage wakes you. Lola’s painting again.

The house is empty when you get up. Kyle and Cricket both must work their day jobs at the diner today. You putter through your morning routine, shower, coffee, a piece of toast with strawberry jam in front of the TV as you try to find any news that might still be on. No luck. But it’s probably better that way, because most news these days is pretty awful.

After you finish your meager breakfast and wash your hands, you send a text off to Chayton. Simple, straightforward, _Hey, you still up for getting together sometime soon? I can do as early as today because I have no life._

He responds almost instantly. _I’m stuck inside working today, but you’re welcome over if you have nothing better to do._

You hike an eyebrow. He works from home, then? Maybe he’s a graphic designer. You text back, _Sure. Any time good for you._

Chayton texts you his address and basic directions on the buses and trains from your house. You know that area. It’s not far from the lake.

You change into some more presentable clothing, with minimal paint and ink stains, grab your wallet and keys, slip a half-full sketchbook and your pencil box into your messenger bag, and make your way out. You don’t bother telling Lola as you leave. She’ll be too wrapped up in her work, and she knows you can take care of yourself.

You take the bus to the blue line and the blue line to the red line and take another bus north, toward the edge of Skokie. It’s mostly empty, as it’s the middle of the day in the middle of the week, and most people have real jobs (unlike you).

Chayton lives in a little ramshackle building tucked halfway down an alley. Both the security door and keypad to open it are broken, but at least it makes it easy to get in. You make your way up the two flights of stairs to his door, and when you knock, Chayton calls out, “It’s open!”

So you go inside.

You step into a tiny hallway that leads to a kitchen on the left and into a large, single studio room ahead. There’s a mattress in the corner with an open laptop playing music resting on the green sheets. Above it is a dream catcher made of rainbow striped yarn and sticks, and the walls are covered with cork boards and magnetic white boards, with hundreds of scraps of paper with scribbles and sketches and paint samples and things cut out from magazines and newspapers pinned up. In the far corner is a painted up metal box full of cans of spray paint. There are windows on almost every wall and all of them have the shades open as he crouches down in the middle of the room, surrounded by scraps of fabric and bottles of ink and other screenprinting materials.

“I like it,” you say.

“Shut up,” he laughs. “It’s a mess.”

“No, I mean it,” you say. He doesn’t look up. You walk around to his front and crouch down as he finishes putting down some ink over a stencil of bear, standing on its hind legs and holding a rocket launcher. “What’s this?”

“I’m working on some new stencils for my silk screening business,” he says. He glances up for a moment. “Just messing around with some scraps until I get it right. Don’t waste shirts and bags and whatever that way.”

“You have a business?”

“Yeah,” he says. He pulls the silkscreen off the fabric and frowns. “Still too fuzzy around the edges,” he mutters. He puts it to the side and looks back up at you. “I sell at art fairs and stuff sometimes, but mostly online. I have business cards in the paint box if you want to check it out. Laptop’s open.” He looks back at his work again, grabbing another slip of fabric and laying it out flat, putting the silkscreen on top. A timer rings somewhere and he pauses, going to the open closet door and pulling out shirts one by one, then taking them all into the corner to throw over an ironing board. You let him get to it and wake up his laptop, fishing out a card on the way.

His website is clean and streamlined and neat, much like his work style. You go through a few of the available stencils: shirts, bags, patches. At the very bottom of the page, on clearance, is a square patch of a penguin in a top hat. Exactly like the one on your bag.

“Jesus, Chay, you’re everywhere, aren’t you?”

He looks up from the iron, one eyebrow raised. “Chay?”

“Should I not call you that?”

He pauses. “No, I like it. Keep it. What do you mean, I’m everywhere?”

“I mean, I have one of your patches and I didn’t even know it was yours. Do you have an e-bay?”

“I used to, but I closed it about three months back. Is that where you bought it?”

“Yeah.” You leave the patches page and move over to the messenger bags. Many of the same images, some with more detail, some only text. You look up at him with a wry grin. “Next thing I’m going to find out you wrote my color theory textbook or founded my favorite paint brand or something.”

“Oh, God no,” he laughs. “I would _not_ have the patience for that kind of project.” He finishes setting the last of the shirts, then hangs them all back up in the closet and plops down on the bed beside you.

“It’s gotten way too stuffy in here,” he says. “Want to go out with me for a while? There are a couple of coffee shops and cafés around.”

“I can’t,” you say. Your brow draws down and your mouth twists. “I’m down to the change in the bottom of my bag until I can sell some more paintings.”

He laughs and wraps his arm around your shoulder, squeezing you close, friendly, welcoming. You knock your knee against his, hoping it’s not too forward. He doesn’t seem to mind. “I’ve been there,” he says. “I’ll get you as long as you don’t go crazy.”

* * *

 

Chayton seems to know where all the best coffee shops are. This one is as nice as the last, if in a different way. The light is much brighter, there are more windows, the space is more open and decorated in warmer colors. Paintings from local artists hang on the walls, and you make a mental note to talk to the manager about yours before you leave. Maybe you could whip something up and get some income happening.

They brew coffee from a local roaster you aren’t familiar with. Usually you’d get at least sugar, but Chayton insists you at least _try_ it black first. So you do.

“It’s a little bitter,” you say. “But it’s not bad.”

Chayton sits across from you, his chair propped to the side and legs sprawled out and crossed at the ankles. His feet hit the wall, so he’s not in anyone’s way. His jeans have holes in both knees and ink splatters at the thighs. When you catch sight of his palms, you can see the tar black remnants of ink stains on his fingertips and the heels of his hands.

“Do you work a day job?” he asks.

“No, but it’s looking like I might have to find one,” you say. “I can’t live rent free forever. Eventually I’ve got to start pitching in.”

“So you’re looking?”

“Not yet, but if something came up I would consider it.” You look up from your coffee, fingers loose around the stir stick as you mix in some sugar. “Why do you ask?”

“I could use help with my silk screening,” he says. He takes a sip of his coffee, another black Americano. “I asked Cricket, but zie’s got too much going on. I can’t pay you much, but we could figure out something fair, if you’re interested? At least a dollar above Chicago’s minimum wage.”

You put the end of the stir stick in your mouth, sucking the coffee off as you think. “I don’t know how to silk screen,” you start. “So you’d have to teach me.”

“Done,” he says. “It’s a little finicky during some steps, but it’s not difficult.”

“In that, case, yeah, I’d love to.”

Chayton grins. You grin back so wide your face could split.

“I’ll start teaching you when we get back to my place, and I can give you the supplies you need so you can work from home instead of having to travel all the way out here every day.”

* * *

 

Chayton does everything from scratch. He builds and stretches the screens himself from two by twos and polyester mesh, and even though you won’t need to do that part, he still shows you how. He shows you how to paint the screen with the photo emulsion, stressing sharply it has to dry in complete darkness, and do you have a space you could use? Your closet, you offer, if you stuff a towel underneath the crack in the door.

“This you’ll be doing a lot of,” he says, “so pay attention.”

He applies the photo emulsion with a squeegee, his movements quick and precise. His dark brown eyes dart over the screen as he works, sharp and focused like a shards of tinted glass. As soon as it’s down and smooth, he places it flat on the closet floor and shuts the door, stuffing a raggedy, ink-stained piece of fabric underneath.

“Now we’ve got to wait for it to dry,” he says. “I like it thin, so it doesn’t take as long as it could, but it still takes a few hours.”

In the meantime, he sets up a movie, an indie French film you’re not familiar with about a man who sells his baby to pay off a debt. It’s sparse and dim and grey, but it’s interesting in a student art film sort of way. You start it sitting side by side, but by the time it’s over, you’re lying down on your stomachs next to each other, elbows and feet bumping in a totally comfortable way people who just met shouldn’t. When the movie ends, he minimizes the video player and says, “All right, let me check the screen and see if we can get back to work.”

* * *

 

Chayton goes through the rest of the process with you, then makes you do one as he walks you through it, then you do it on your own, and he only interjects if you ask him a question. You don’t notice the sunlight dimming until it’s too low to work anymore and he flips on the overhead light.

“If it’s getting dark, it’s probably getting on nine or so,” you say. You kneel on the floor beside him, screens in front of each of you as you print simple, solid images and he does more complex ones. Your hands are stained with ink and your knuckles and fingers are sore, but only in the way they can be after a day of hard work. You sigh, catching yourself before it comes out too heavy. “How late does the bus on this street run?” you ask.

“It’s an Owl,” Chayton says. “All night.”

You hum thoughtfully, then say, “I should still probably get going so I can get back to the last bus in time. I really don’t want to have to walk from the blue line home.”

“No problem,” he says. He waves you away from your work and says, “I’ll finish this. Come by tomorrow to pick up the stuff you need? Or I can come by there and drop it off.”

“Whatever,” you say. You pause. “Actually, could you bring it by the house? The owner of the coffee shop agreed to display some of my work, but I only have two pieces right now and they’re both too big.”

“No problem,” he says. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”

“Yeah,” you say, and a handshake doesn’t seem like enough but a hug seems like too much, so instead, you don’t touch him at all. You just let him walk you out, and as you head down the stairs, you hear the click of the lock behind you.

* * *

 

When you get home, you go straight back to your room to dig through your sketchbooks for some ideas for paintings. You’re too tired to paint now, but if you have some things picked out it’ll make your work tomorrow easier. Eventually, you pull a few sketches to put through the abstracting process in the morning, put them to the side, shut off all the lights but the fairy lights, and…

And you stare at the ceiling for a while. You lie there in the dim light, eyes darting between the strings of fairy lights hanging from the ceiling, like fireflies in the late summer evening. The whir of the fan in the window and the chirp of crickets and screaming cicadas outside are the only noise to keep you company. You can’t stop _thinking_ about Chayton, and every time you close your eyes, you see his face, you feel his elbow bumping against yours, you hear his laugh. What is _wrong_ with you? Yeah, he’s kind and he’s funny and he’s smart and he’s talented and he’s -- oh no. No, no, no. You’re developing a crush, or a squish, or a _something_ toward him that wants to take a step past friendship but you _can’t_ , because... _because why_? You have to ask yourself.

Because nobody’s ever stayed before, and he’s such a good friend already, and you don’t want to lose him, too. And isn’t he technically your boss, now? That’s too much potential to make a mess of things. You cover your face with your hands and groan in frustration.

Why are you so set on making your life so unnecessarily complicated?

* * *

 

You wake up before the sun again. It’s becoming a problem. But you have nothing else to do this early, so you make a pot of coffee and take it out to the garage with your mug and a bowl of sugar and get to work. You don’t get into abstracting yet. You start with something a little more realistic based on a series of sketches you did of Kyle onstage a while back. You blur the lines a bit, sharpen the corners, make it more angular in some places and smoother in others, brighten the colors from blues and reds to cyans and magentas. This one’s just practice, so you let it go where it takes you, and it takes you to the sharp geometric shapes of cubism and the kinds of bright colors that can only be found in a paint box. The sun is up by the time you’re done, shining bright white behind you as it rises over the houses and apartments on the block. You leave your painting on the easel to dry a bit before trying to move it and head back inside.

Lola is in the kitchen, looking around in the dishwasher and cupboards.

“Morning,” you say. She turns around, her face distraught until she sees the coffeepot in your left hand.

“Really, March?” she says. You look down at it.

“I wasn’t expecting to be out as long as I was, I guess,” you chuckle. She smiles and shakes her head. You hand her the coffeepot and she dumps out the last bit of old coffee. She doesn’t rinse it before she starts a new pot. You only ever wash it when it gets dirty. Cricket insists the buildup makes it better. You put another spoonful of sugar in your cup and then put the bowl next to the coffeepot, placing your mug to the side until you need it again. A whole pot of coffee plus at least one more cup? Maybe that’s why you can’t sleep past four a.m.

“Your eyes are all bruised up,” Lola says. She pulls down her bottom left eyelid with a finger.

“I haven’t been sleeping well.”

“Have we been too loud? I know we’re up pretty late.”

“No,” you say. “You guys are fine. I think I’m still just hung up on my terrible relationship history.”

“She didn’t deserve you,” Lola says simply. You don’t correct her, because you haven’t thought about your ex-girlfriend since the night you went out wheatpasting with Chayton. The last thing you need is her trying to interfere in whatever the hell your feelings are turning into.

You need to change the subject, so you say, “I think I have a job, now.”

“You think?” Lola chuckles.

“Well, I’m helping Chay with his silk screening now, and he’s offered to pay me, so, kind of?”

“Chay?” she asks. The timer on the coffee maker goes off and she pours herself a cup. She offers it to you and you take it.

“What?”

“He just doesn’t like nicknames,” she says. “At least, that’s what he’s always said. Last time I called him that he glared at me like he could set me on fire with his eyes.”

You frown. “Really? I called him that yesterday and he said he liked it.”

“I think he just likes you,” she laughs.

“You think?” You barely manage to keep the hitch out of your voice.

“I think we can safely assume so. I mean, it’s only been a few days, but he’s still come over every day since you met, and that’s more than he has in the past couple months all together.”

“You sound surprised.”

“I don’t mean any offense,” she says. “It’s nothing against you. I don’t know if I’d say he _dislikes_ people. But he’s guarded. I think you’re so open and non-threatening he feels like he’s safe with you.”

“Hm,” is all you say. She looks at the clock on the microwave.

“Oh, shit,” she says. “I almost forgot my pills.”

You chuckle. “How do you almost forget? I’m like, vibrating in anticipation the whole day before my testosterone.”

“After you’ve been doing it a few years, you’ll understand,” she laughs. She ruffles your hair in that special way she and Kyle have. “I’ll be back in a few. May as well get it done now, while I remember.”

* * *

 

After another half pot of coffee, you go back to the garage and set up a makeshift workspace with the table you use for sculpture and a stepstool. Your room is more comfortable, but the light is better out here. You have three pictures to start and you draw six more of each, slowly twisting and warping the lines until they become abstract shapes floating on a page rather than the still-lives and portraits they started as. When you finally get to the point where you’re ready to paint, you throw down some experimental splotches of color, a few different ones in each space, with your colored pencils. Then you get to work at your canvas.

About halfway through the first one, you turn on the stereo Lola keeps in the far corner, playing whatever CD is in it right now. It’s some punk band you’re unfamiliar with.

You switch between sitting on the stool with your feet curled up under the seat and standing and back again. Once you’ve thrown down the base colors on the primed canvas, you stand, dropping your paintbrush in the cup of now filthy water beside you and stretching your arms high up over your head. A soft grunt escapes your mouth, then, when you drop your arms, a heavy sigh. You’re about to turn around, but then you see Chayton walking up the driveway, Schatzi trotting behind him. He nearly passes the garage without looking inside, but just as he’s about to step out of your sight, Schatzi takes a sharp turn toward you, and he turns his head to follow her. He smiles at you and you gesture him in. When he drops the two bags in his hands, they thunk hard against the concrete floor. Schatzi rubs up against one, then pops up on her back legs and sticks her head inside it.

“I brought everything you’ll need,” he says. “Three screens and the stencils in this bag --“ he nudges the one on his left with his toe and Schatzi pulls her head out with an annoyed meow, “and all your inks and fabrics in the other one. There’s a folder in there with instructions on what goes where and how many of everything you’ll need.”

“Thanks,” you say. You take a step to the side. “Want to come in? You should stay a while; I’d feel terrible if you came all this way just to turn back around again.”

“Sure,” he laughs. But when the sound of his footsteps behind you stops, you pause, turning to look over your shoulder. He’s looking at your painting. You slide between them.

“It’s not done yet.” It comes out quick and almost panicked, like it’s one long word. But he’s taller than you and can easily look over your shoulder at the still drying canvas.

“It looks great so far,” he says. He looks back into your face. “Can’t wait to see it finished. It was…” He trails off and glances over your shoulder again. “It started out as a flower vase, yeah? That’s what it’s based on?”

You look over your shoulder as if to remind yourself, even though you know exactly what you’ll see. Finally, you step out of his way and up beside him. “Yeah.” You cross your arms over your chest, your still-damp hands curling tight around your elbows.

“I like that you can kind of tell what it was,” Chayton says. “Instead of just being shapes and colors. Having some kind of form like that.”

You glance over at his profile, his sharp eyes darting over the canvas.

“Me too,” you finally say. It feels kind of self-obsessed to say something like that, but like your instructors always said, if you don’t sell yourself, nobody else is going to do it for you. Chayton hums once, appreciatively, and then starts to turn, but leans back slightly. You look back down at the bags. Schatzi is gone. When you look back up, Chayton is watching you, and he nods his head toward the canvas propped up against the wall. “Is that yours, too?” he asks.

You follow his gaze to make sure it is yours before you take credit for it. He’s looking at the cubist guitarist.

“Yeah. I did that one early this morning when I couldn’t sleep.”

He hums again, and when he opens his mouth, you think he’s going to comment on the painting in some way, but what he says is, “You don’t sleep much, either?”

“It might be all the coffee I drink.” You finally drop your arms, but your hands need something to do, so you stick your fingers in your pockets. “But I don’t know, since it’s mostly in the morning. I go to bed at like, midnight or later, and I wake up at four or five a.m. at full speed, ready to jump out of bed and go.”

“Me, too,” Chayton says. “Well, sort of. Usually when I wake up, I stare at the ceiling wishing I was still asleep for a while.” He looks back at the painting.

“I love the vibrancy of the colors,” he says.

“Cyan and magenta instead of blue and red,” you say. “Downy chick for the yellow. It’s a lot brighter than the regular stuff.”

“Like a color printer,” he says.

“Yeah. One of my instructors taught us about that. The class was digital design but I figured I could apply it to traditional media, too. I’m not sure how I feel about it yet. I think I like red, blue, and yellow better, just, in general.”

“That’s smart,” he murmurs, and you don’t think you’re supposed to hear it. But you can’t help but grin at the compliment, anyway.

“I’m not sure I like it all that much, though,” you say. “This time it worked out, but when I tried to make plain old blue and red, it made a mess of things.”

A drawn-out, awkward pause.

“Come inside,” you finally say. “I’ll get you something to drink.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come visit me [on Tumblr](http://indecentpause.tumblr.com) for short stories, excerpts from WIPs, Shakespeare nonsense, and more!


	5. Chapter 5

You pass your days silk screening and painting. You manage at least one painting a day, using the in-between drying time to meet your t-shirt quota. You still often wake up at four or five in the morning, you still don’t get to bed until after midnight. But at least now you have plenty of things to keep you busy while you’re not sleeping. You didn’t realize how much you missed this garage, this house, while you were still living with your ex-girlfriend, but the space feels like home more than the apartment with her ever did. Communal meals around the brick and door coffee table, shared workspaces in the garage, fresh herbs in the backyard, even the sparseness of your room is nice compared to how much crap was always lying around at your old place.

Chayton takes you around to all sorts of places you should have already known about but somehow didn’t, coffee shops and restaurants and indie bookstores. You get closer, both physically and emotionally, closer than you should allow yourself to, because your crush isn’t going anywhere. If anything it’s getting bigger.

August ends, like everything ends. You won’t miss it while you wait for it to come around next year. September is unusually cold and rainy, almost November weather, so you wait for Chayton inside the café with a cup of coffee to warm your hands. Every time the door chime rings, you look up, and every time it’s someone else. Finally, you look up and it _is_ him. He offers you a wave, then points at the line. You nod. He pulls off his gloves as he steps up to wait.

“Can you believe it’s only supposed to be fifty degrees out?”

You look up as he drops his backpack at his feet and sits down across from you.

“That’s _it_?” That’s impossible. “Fifties is t-shirt weather. This is scarf and gloves weather!”

“It’s the wind,” he says. “It’s gotta be.” He unzips his hoodie halfway, revealing the top of a red t-shirt with some kind of black print you can’t make out. He pops the lid off his drink to let out some of the steam, and when he looks up at you, he pauses. He gently takes a few strands of your hair between his fingers, and as he lets them slide away, he says, “You’re almost more silver than brown, now.”

He’s been touching you like that more and more frequently, and you’re not sure what it means. There’s nothing about it that’s not platonic, but he doesn’t touch Cricket or Kyle or Lola like this. He keeps his distance. But there _is_ no distance when it comes to you. It’s nice. It’s comforting. It makes you feel like you’re special. Important. Even if it is confusing as hell.

You shrug.

“Have you thought about dyeing it?”

“I don’t see why I should,” you say. “Silver is a perfectly respectable color.”

“Yeah,” Chayton says. “Was just wondering. A lot of people would.”

“Meh!” You give him an exaggerated shrug. You glance over his shoulder at the painting behind him.

“They put up one of my pieces this morning,” you say, nodding in the painting’s direction, trying not to smile _too_ proudly. Chayton halfway turns in his chair.

“Which one?” he asks.

“The farthest one from us, right up at the foot of the stairs,” you say. “The bust of the woman with the flowers in her hair.”

“ _You_ painted that?” He swivels back at you, his face wide open with surprise.

You nod. “I figured something like that would sell better than something abstract or cubist. I can do realism, too. You’ve seen my sketches.”

“Yeah.” He takes a tentative sip of his coffee to check the temperature. It must be too hot, because he puts it back down. “I guess it just never ceases to surprise me how versatile you are.”

You smile.

“How much are you selling for?”

“$325,” you answer. “About $25 less than average for the other ones displayed.”

You take a sip of your coffee. The steam fogs up your glasses, so you take them off and put them on the table. Chayton smiles like you’re the cutest thing he’s ever seen, maybe, but you can’t be sure because his face is a little blurry and also because that doesn’t make sense.

“I’m going out tonight,” he says, and you know exactly what he means specifically _because_ he’s so vague. “You’re welcome to come.”

“Yeah.” You grin. “I’d love to.”

“I’m thinking 10:00, maybe.” He drums his fingers against his cardboard coffee cup once, twice. He stills. His fingertips are still stained with splotchy black ink. Some of it bleeds under his fingernails, still perfectly cut and shaped. “I was planning on stencils.”

“Really?” Your shoulders perk and you sit up straighter. You haven’t had a chance to see him stencil on the street yet. All you’ve done with him is wheatpaste and silkscreen, but you want to learn as much about his work as you can. And stencils you could potentially apply to your own work.

You pull your phone out of your pocket and glance out the window. 7:00 and it’s already starting to get dark.

“Yeah, really.” He laughs. You take another sip of your coffee and don’t get the dampness of steam on your face, so you put your glasses back on. “Stencils are how I started and stencils are how I’ll go out.”

* * *

 

10:00 comes quicker than you would have expected it to. You walk from the café -- yet another late night spot Chayton introduced you to -- to the blue line stop a few blocks down and you jump on.

“We’re going to Wicker Park,” Chayton explains. “Around this time, everyone’s either gone home or is inside at dinner or a concert. So there could be people, but not many, and they’ll be easy to avoid as long as we’re done by 11:00. 10:30 would be better.”

The train lurches hard as it starts and stops its way through the Loop, and finally you get back on the track to O’Hare and it goes back to the regular bump and rattle of the tracks. Sometimes people get on, but not at many of the stops. Most of the traffic probably died down at about 9:00 and won’t start again until 11:00.

Chayton sits in the double seat behind you, leaning over the backrest beside you. You prop your feet up and tuck your knees in, slouching against the window as you sit sideways so you can talk, even though you don’t talk about much of anything. But everything’s so comfortable, you don’t _need_ to talk about anything important, or even anything at all. You yawn, covering your mouth with your arm, and Chayton knuckles your shoulder. His fingers linger there, curled against your sleeve, the warmth of his knuckles against your neck.

“None of that,” he laughs. “Not yet.”

You swat his hand away, more out of pretense than anything. You’d be happy with a simple touch like that for hours, but you decided long ago you weren’t going to say anything to anyone about your dumb little crush. Especially since nothing much would change on your end, other than wanting to cuddle every now and then. Maybe fall asleep, side by side. But regular relationship sexual stuff simply wouldn’t happen, so you keep quiet. Even though the rest of it would be so nice.

There isn’t time to dwell on that, though, because you arrive at your stop shortly and hop out of the train. You start to head down the stairs, but Chayton grabs your wrist.

“Not yet,” he murmurs. A few people pass by you on their way out, and everything is still and silent under the yellowed lights of the station.

“Now we go,” he says. He takes the steps two at a time, but you’d fall on your face if you tried, so you go normally. You go through the turnstiles and he gestures you to the side of the station opposite the card reloaders. Bare wall. A few stickers placed around, a couple of flyers taped up, but mostly brown brick. Chayton slides one backpack strap off his shoulder and pulls it to his chest, pulling out a can of black spray paint and a stencil of a robot head with a jagged speech bubble that reads, ‘assimilate and destroy’ in chunky letters. He pulls the bandanna around his neck up over his nose and mouth and gestures for you to do the same. You follow his lead.

“Hold down the edge and turn your head away. I don’t want you breathing this shit. That bandanna isn’t enough to protect you from the fumes.”

You push down the corners of the plastic and turn your head as far as you can while still watching what he’s is doing. His left hand is flat on the opposite side. He shakes the can and sprays three short, horizontal lines, one after the other.

“Done,” he says. It takes seconds. He shoves the spray paint into his bag and starts walking as he wipes the paint off of the front of the stencil with a rag, which he then sticks in his back pocket. You trot after him.

When you catch up, you ask, “Where are we going?” You leave the station and he switches out his robot stencil for another one. A roaring lioness. You follow him when he turns to the right and slaps it up against the wall, and you repeat.

“I only do publicly owned places and chains,” he says. “I don’t do indie businesses unless they hire me. They don’t have the money to clean it up if they don’t want it, and I’m not about to fuck over the people who’ve fed me and sold my work and advertised my shop. I mean, cleaners go around, but they’re slow as hell.” He finishes the stencil and pulls it away, scrawling below the new image, in black letters, ‘dead men can’t catcall.’ He wipes down the stencil and shoves everything back in his bag. “The city doesn’t care enough to keep up with it, most chains only half-ass it unless it gets out of control, so it’s more likely to stay around for a while.”

You’re already at the crosswalk on the corner. You cross over to North Avenue and make your way to one of the free newspaper boxes. He picks out a bright red one. Someone’s painted over the F and altered the R, so now it reads, “PEE DAILY.”

“Did you do this?” you ask.

He glances up at you from his kneeling position on the ground. “Nah,” he chuckles. “My sense of humor’s not so low-brow.” Two lines of paint this time, long but quick. You lean over the top to see what he’s painted. It’s the eyes, nose, and grin of the Cheshire Cat. “Not gonna lie, though, I did laugh the first time I saw it.”

Chayton grabs the corner of the newspaper box and starts to push himself up, but his hand slips, hard, and he ends up back on his knees on the sidewalk.

“Fuck,” he whispers.

“Are you okay?” You reach out for his arm to help him up, but he jerks away. When he moves his hand, you can see a splotch of blood on the concrete.

“Don’t touch me,” he says. His voice is shaky but sharp. He looks down at the palm of his hand and whispers another curse. For a moment, he stares at it, ashen in the face, but then he seems to find himself and grabs his backpack. He pulls out an alcohol wipe and a plastic bandage, swiping the wipe over the cut on his palm and taping it up. He barely flinches as he works.

“Did you get any blood on you?” he asks.

“What?”

He locks eyes with you and repeats, “Did you get any blood on you?” His voice is hard.

“No,” you say. “I --”

“Good.” He checks over the rest of his hand, the heel, his fingertips, his wrist. Everything but his palm is fine. He pulls out a plastic glove and slips it over the bandage.

_What’s all this for_? But you don’t ask aloud. It’s obvious this is serious to him, and you don’t want to belittle it.

“This is going to have to be our last one,” he says. He pushes himself to his feet, this time without the help of the newspaper box. “I’ve got to get home and clean this up properly.”

Is he squicked out by blood? You’ve never met someone who was, but you’ve heard of it, and you can kind of understand why bleeding could freak someone out. Something that’s supposed to be on the inside of your body suddenly being outside could probably do that to a lot of people.

But all you say is, “Okay. Let’s get going, then.”

“The North bus to the red line will be faster for me than taking the blue all the way back into the Loop to transfer,” he says. “So if you want to split here and go home, that’s cool. I understand.”

“I’ll go with you,” you offer. Then you think, why? You need a reason. It’s not like he injured his leg. “For… moral support. Or something.” A stupid reason, but at least you have one.

He eyes you almost warily, then breaks out in a small smile and shakes his head. “All right,” he says. “Come on, then.”

You mostly sit in quiet on the train and the buses. He doesn’t speak and you have nothing important to say. It feels like hours without your headphones or a conversation, but finally, you get back to Chayton’s place. He lets you inside and says, “Make yourself comfortable. Feel free to grab anything from the fridge. I just need a minute to fix this up.”

“Okay,” you say, but he’s already gone into the bathroom and shut the door.

You pour yourself a glass of water and sit on the edge of the foot of his bed, barely balancing there so as not to take up more space than you’re welcome to. The walls are thin, so you can hear Chayton moving around in the bathroom, but he’s only in there for a few minutes before he comes out with his hand wrapped up in a real bandage.

“Was it that bad?” you ask. He looks at his hand, as if to be sure that’s what you’re talking about.

“It was deeper than I thought,” he says. “I taped it up. The bandage is more in case anything leaks while it’s healing over.”

“Do you need stitches?”

“Pretty sure it’s not _that_ deep.”

“Okay,” you say. “I’d hate to have to escort you to the hospital on a bus.”

He laughs and sits down beside you, pulling his laptop onto his knees. “Want to watch a movie?” he asks.

“Sure. Pick whatever you want.”

He picks a movie filmed in live action and then rotoscoped over, a movie made of a number of short, philosophical vignettes rather than one overarching plot. It’s fascinating, both the animation and the dialogue, and you end up wrapped up so deeply you both lose track of time, and suddenly it’s past one a.m., and you don’t notice until the bus between your house and the blue line has already stopped running.

“Guess you’re staying here tonight,” Chayton says.

“That’s okay?” you ask.

“Sure. I’ve got space. You can take the bed.”

“I’m not taking your bed,” you say.

“You’re a guest. You get the bed. It’s okay. I have no problem with the floor.”

“Well, neither do I, and I’m not taking your bed away from you.”

Eventually, somehow, you both argue your way into sharing the bed, which is both nice and terrifying, because what if he glances over to you and can see your crush on your face _just by looking_? What if you, like, roll over on top of him in your sleep or something? Just thinking about it has you mortified.

“I move around a lot when I sleep,” you warn, trying to preemptively diffuse that possible scenario.

“Me, too,” Chayton says. “So maybe one of us _will_ be on the floor before the night is over.” He laughs and throws a crocheted afghan over your chest as he stands to turn off the light. You rearrange the blanket a bit so it can cover both of you. The lights go out and he slides into the bed beside you, not touching, but closer than is really respectable for ‘just friends.’ His arm is bent in on itself, knuckles of his uninjured hand almost brushing against your sleeve. You lean into the touch and tilt your head to look at him better. His eyes are closed. The shadows over his face are barely cut through by the streetlights streaming in through the window. You take a mental photo to draw down in the morning.

“Good night,” you whisper.

“Night,” he mumbles back.

* * *

 

When you wake up, it’s still dark, and you and Chayton are tangled up like snakes. You untangle your feet from his and carefully worm your arm out from under his neck. His cheek is soft and warm. His hand is heavy and cold on your shoulder from peeking out from under the blanket for so long. You don’t let yourself dwell on it, instead fumbling for your phone to check the time. 6:00. Not long before the sun will start to rise. Better than 4:00 a.m., for sure, especially since you wouldn’t know what to do with yourself until Chayton wakes up. He’s said he hasn’t been sleeping well, so you try to be as quiet and move as smoothly as you can when you stand, but the bed shifts and jostles under your weight and sinks on his side. His breathing suddenly picks up and he rolls over, his eyes fluttering open.

“What?” he asks.

You’re not sure what that’s in relation to, so you say, “What, what?”

He drags his uninjured hand over his face. The normal reddish yellow undertones of his skin are cooled by the dim streetlight filtering in, his messy charcoal black hair darkened to midnight. “Sorry,” he says. “For a second I forgot you stayed over. Ignore me.”

“Sorry I woke you,” you whisper. “You can go back to sleep. I’ll find a way to occupy myself.”

“Nah.” He yawns widely, cupping his hand over his mouth. “I’m up. You hungry?”

“I could eat.”

“I’ll make some pancakes.”

“Do you mind if I use your shower in the meantime?” You’re still covered with grit from last night’s outing. Really, you should have showered before you went to bed.

“Go for it,” he says. “Clean towels in the cabinet under the sink. Help yourself to shampoo and whatever.”

“Thanks.” There’s a rustling behind you as you turn toward the bathroom, and the light in the main room switches on as you go inside.

You’re in and out in five minutes. Chayton is still on the bed, laptop on his knees, probably looking up recipes?

You finish drying off your hair as you walk back into the main room. Your jeans are back on, but your shirt is still underneath your arm.

“Hey, March?” Chayton’s voice is the most tentative and least sure you’ve ever heard it. You push the towel out of your face, then use it to wipe at your nose.

“Yeah?”

“What happened here?” He draws a line horizontally over his chest with his hand. You look down at yourself, as if you’ve forgotten. In some ways you have.

“Top surgery,” you say. You scrub once more at your face, then finally pull your shirt back over your head. “Mom paid for it for my sixteenth birthday. I was pretty lucky.”

“You’re trans?” he asks unsurely. You pause, looking at him, really looking, for the first time. His brow is knit tight together, his mouth pulled down in a frown.

“Yes?” Suddenly _you’re_ the unsure one. Cricket and Lola are both trans and have never attempted to make a secret of it, and they’re both Chayton’s friends, so you assumed he wouldn’t have a problem with it. Does he?

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

You don’t have an answer. You have to take a minute to find one, and just as it comes together, he continues. “Did you not trust me?”

“No, no,” you assure him. “I mean, yes, I trust you, and no, that wasn’t it. I just… it never came up. It was never relevant to anything we talk about. It’s not something I hide, but it’s not the kind of thing I announce, either. There would have to be a reason I was talking about it, and I never had one. It didn’t seem important.”

“I guess that’s true,” he says. Finally, his face loosens and he looks back up at yours. “Sorry, I… I didn’t mean to put you on the spot like that. I feel like I should have known, I guess.”

“Well, I don’t see how you could unless someone told you. It’s okay.” You shrug and fold your arms over your chest protectively. He notices you shrink away, and he says,

“I’m sorry, March.” He pulls his hair back into a stubby ponytail, holds it for a second, lets it fall back around his face. “I shouldn’t have… I shouldn’t have cornered you like that. And I’m sorry.”

You shrug, and your arms loosen a bit. “It’s okay,” you say. A smile finally creeps across your face. “I should have expected questions about the scars if I was going to come out here with my shirt off.”

He chuckles and unplugs his laptop from the charger cable. “I just pulled up a recipe for coconut chocolate chip pancakes, if you’re interested.”

“Um, hell yes?”

You cook and you eat and you help Chayton silkscreen for a while. The sun comes up and traffic starts moving outside and his downstairs neighbor plays their music too loud. You talk for a long time, about art, mostly, but also a lot about nothing at all, and it’s so comfortable, so right, it slips out when you aren’t paying attention to yourself:

“I really like you, Chay. A lot.”

His hands freeze halfway down his screen, ink dripping onto the fabric underneath. His shoulders and neck are tight. No longer hidden by his now pulled back hair, you can see the clench of his jaw, hard, stressed. Finally, he breathes out through his nose, shaky and slow, and he whispers, “Why did you have to say that?”

You still, your own hands at the bottom of your screen. You stare at the black smear of ink in front of you, breathing heavily through your nose, lips clenched tight together. You close your eyes. Oh, God, oh, God, March, you idiot, you ruined _everything_.

“Sorry,” you whisper. “Forget it.” As if you can sweep it under the rug and hide it, ignore it.

Chayton’s screen creaks next to you and you look over. His whole weight is pressed down on the wood with either hand. His eyes are closed. His arms are shaking.

“Forget it,” you repeat.

“Everything was fine,” he chokes. “Everything was _perfect_. And now you --” He interrupts himself with a pained huff that’s part _whine_. You’ve never seen him so upset. Oh, God, you royally fucked _everything_. He’s going to fire you and kick you out and worse, he’s never going to want to see you again.

“You don’t want to be with me,” he says. “You don’t want all the baggage I come with.”

“Well,” you whisper. You look away, back down at your own screen. “I mean, I’m pretty sure I do. Obviously you don’t. That’s fine. I’m not going to try to make you do or feel anything you don’t want to or can’t.” Your voice is cracking now, hot and sharp in the back of your throat, tight and choking in your chest. It feels like all the worst parts of crying, but your eyes are dry.

“You don’t,” he repeats. His voice is shaking.

“Why?” you ask.

When he doesn’t reply, you look over at him. He’s shaking his head, knocking a few strands of hair loose from his ponytail.

“Shut up,” he says, but there’s no venom in his voice.

“Not until you tell me what you meant.”

He stands. Starts pacing. You don’t like being towered over like this, so you stand, too.

“Chay, what’s wrong?”

He continues to pace, his arms tight around his chest. He shakes his head again.

“Chay, talk to me! You don’t feel the same way, fine, okay! That sucks for me but I’ll get over it eventually. But you’re my friend, and if something’s wrong I want to help!”

He drops his head into his uninjured hand, fingers tight on his temple. The line of his furrowed eyebrows peeks out from beneath his hair. He wipes his face, scrubs hard, as if he’s trying to wash something away. His hands curl in on themselves, still pressed against his cheeks, and he shakes his head again. He doesn’t answer you. All he says is a whispered, “Fuck.”

“Chay --” You take a step forward, stop abruptly and stumble. Whatever the problem is, there’s not much you can do to make it worse, so you take another step and rest your hand loosely on his arm. “Talk to me. What’s going on?”

He shrugs your hand away and takes a step back.

“Don’t touch me,” he whispers. His eyes are averted, staring at something behind your left foot. That, _that_ , more than anything he’s said, cuts right through you. It slits your chest right open and rips your heart out through your broken ribcage, because if he’s not comfortable with casual touch anymore…

“Why can’t you just _talk_ to me, Chay?” You struggle to keep your voice even, but the strain comes out through your words and catches in your throat.

“Because there’s nothing you can do!”

“You don’t know that!”

“Pretty sure I do, March.”

“You won’t even let me try! Why won’t you let me --”

“I’m positive, March.” Chayton’s voice drops, low, sad, maybe a little afraid.

“Okay, well, hey, guess what! Chay, _you don’t know everything_. I know everyone thinks I’m stupid and clueless and worthless and --”

“Nobody thinks that --”

“Well, _whatever_ , I know I’m not good enough for you to want in a relationship but I’m still your fucking friend, and friends _help_ each other, Chay. Let me --”

“I’m positive.” You can barely hear him over your pulse slamming in your ears.

“You keep saying that, but --”

“No, I mean.” He pulls his hair tie out and runs his hands through his hair, leaving it sticking up in awkward angles in the back. He smoothes it back into a stubby ponytail but doesn’t tie it again. He slips the band onto his wrist and lets his hair drop free. When he lowers his hands, they’re shaking.

“I mean, I’m _positive_ , March,” he repeats. “I have AIDS. I’ve been in treatment for about seven years, now. Since I was seventeen.”

Your breath freezes in your chest. Oh God. Oh God. So that’s why he --

“So when you cut your hand last night, that was --”

“If you’d had so much as an open paper cut and come in contact with the blood on my hand, you’d have been at risk, too.” He swallows. “I like you, March. A lot. A… a lot more than I should. But I’m a stick of dynamite waiting for the right disease to light the fuse. It could be ten years from now. It could be ten weeks. It could be anywhere in the middle or anywhere before or after. And I’m pretty sure that’s not a risk you want to take.”

You cross your arms over your chest, gripping hard onto each elbow.

“Why do you think you get to make that decision for me?”

“What?”

“Maybe I think it’s worth the risk.”

Chayton looks you in the eye, long and slow, before he turns away and mutters, “Everyone else said that in the beginning, too.”

Your fingers twitch against your elbows, palms hot and sweaty against the rough skin. When you swallow, it sticks in your throat like taffy to your teeth, and finally, you manage to choke out, “I _know_.”

“No, you --”

“I _know_ , Chayton, because everyone always says the same thing to me, too. ‘I don’t care if you’re asexual.’ ‘I can be celibate for you.’ ‘Sex isn’t that important.’ But they _always_ care, Chay, and they always end up leaving because they never meant it in the first place and were just telling me what I wanted to hear until they could fix me.” Your fists clench tight at your sides, now, trembling with the pressure of your grip.

“But I’m not _broken_ , Chay. And neither are you.”

His hand is curled over his mouth, now, his eyes closed, his shoulders heaving with his unsteady breath. Oh, God, is he crying? When he finally opens his eyes, they’re glassy, but no tears fall. He mumbles something you can’t understand from behind his hand.

“What?” you ask.

He drops his hand from his mouth, curling it around his stomach. “I need you to leave,” he whispers. It cuts even harder than when he pushed you away.

“Chay,” you whisper. “I’m sorry, I --”

“Not forever,” he says. “Please, not forever. I’m not cutting you out of my life. I just need a couple of hours to myself. To think. I’ll call or text you or something by the end of the day, okay? I promise. But right now I need to be alone for a while.”

You stuff your hands in your pockets and curl your shoulders in on yourself. You nod. “Okay,” you say. Because even though you want to stay and work through your shit together, if he wants to be alone, you have to respect that.

He shows you to the door, and as you start to open it, he gently, hesitantly touches your wrist. You turn around, and suddenly his hand is hot and sweaty on the back of your neck and his forehead is resting against yours.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. He’s so close you can feel his breath against your nose and mouth. “I just need some time.”

You nod against him, and even though what you want to do is kiss his cheek and pull him into a hug, it wouldn’t be welcome, so you squeeze the back of his neck in response, instead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come visit me at [indecentpause on tumblr](http://indecentpause.tumblr.com/)! There's more writing stuff there.


	6. Chapter 6

It’s barely nine a.m. when you get home. If the others are there, they aren’t up yet, still behind the closed door of their bedroom. You pace your own bedroom until you get dizzy and your legs hurt, then you plop down in your bed. You stand back up and grab your sketchbook and pencil box out of your bookbag by the door. When you sit down, you hunch over with your long legs curled up awkwardly, laying down thin, light graphite strokes that slowly shift from circles and lines and curves into Chayton’s face last night when you laid in bed together, his relaxed shoulders, his loosely curled hands. This is probably the last thing you should be doing, but you want to get the image down before you forget it. It was the closest you’d ever been to him. Now it might be the closest you’ll ever be able to get.

You get lost in the drawing, in the angles of Chayton’s face, in the shadow on his skin, in the chalky smudge of charcoal on your fingers you use to shade the pencil drawing in and the tear of newspaper every time you need a new blending stick. Slowly, your vision starts to blur, so you take off your glasses to clean off the smudges on your shirt. But it’s not your glasses. It’s the tears building up in your eyes you haven’t let fall. You pull your glasses off again, dropping them on the sheets beside you, and bury your eyes in your hand. Your breaths are deep and shuddering. You close the sketchbook and put it to the side. But you don’t cry. You’re not sure you remember how, it’s been so long. You’ve been sad and angry and even depressed at times, but you haven’t felt so hopeless since your mom died.

Every five minutes or so, you glance over at your phone, but nobody’s texted, nobody’s called. _He said he’d get in touch with you. You can trust him. He just needs some space for a while._

Your door is open, but Kyle knocks anyway.

“Hey,” you mumble. He frowns, his brown eyes crinkling in the corners.

“What’s up?” he asks.

You shake your head.

“Can I come in?”

You nod. You wipe your face and slide your glasses back on.

“You have charcoal all over your face,” he chuckles. He pulls his sleeve over his hand and wipes it away. You can barely see the black smudges on the dark blue of his shirt. At least he’ll be able to get it to fade enough it won’t be noticeable. You push your shaggy hair out of your face and finally look up at him as it falls back into your eyes.

“What’s wrong, Rabbit?” His voice is soft now, gentle, like his words are rocks and you’re a cracked pane of glass and he’s afraid he’ll break you.

You open your mouth, but you don’t know what to say, so you close it again and sigh, looking down at your charcoal blackened fingers. You wipe them off on the newspaper beside you, stalling.

“I fucked everything up, like I always do,” you finally murmur.

“You don’t always fuck everything up.”

“Whatever. This time, I did.”

“What happened?”

You wring your hands together in the hem of your shirt, fingers tight. When you move them to your knees, they leave wrought iron grayish smudges behind. Oh, well. Another shirt lost to the cause.

“Can we go out to the garage for this conversation?” you finally ask. “I need to keep my hands busy.”

“Yeah." Kyle's voice is soft, concerned. “Whatever you want.”

In the garage, you grab a medium sized canvas, one you have a few of, so you can waste it on this stupid busywork. You don’t have a design in mind. You go straight into slashing and splattering color over the blank white without priming. Crimson red and charcoal black and carrot orange in sharp lines and chaotic blotches. For a while, Kyle lets you work in silence. But then he pulls the stool up beside you, sitting down with his legs splayed out and his elbows on his knees, stretched out like a cat.

“What’s going on, Rabbit?”

You don’t speak. You slash down another red line, your lips pressed together hard.

“March.”

You throw a splatter of black down right in the middle of the chaos on the canvas. It uses up the last of your energy and you can’t even keep hold of your paintbrush anymore. It slips through your fingers, clattering on the concrete floor, splashing black around the bristles.

“So, Chayton,” you start.

“Is he okay?” Kyle interrupts.

“I think so?”

“Okay. Sorry. Continue.”

“So I… I really like him, a lot. A _lot_ a lot. I have for a while, but I didn’t say anything, because, you know, asexual, and maybe because of that I’m just not meant to be in a romantic relationship, right?”

“I don’t think I’d say --”

“Well, whether I’m right or not doesn’t matter,” you interrupt. He falls quiet again.

“But earlier this morning, while we were working on some silkscreening, everything just felt so comfortable and good and right and I wasn’t thinking, and it slipped out, and he _freaked_ out. It was almost like he was angry at me for saying it out loud, even though, looking back on the way he’s been treating me, I think he might have figured it out before today. But it was like, it’s okay to _know_ , but it’s not okay to _talk about_.”

Kyle is sitting up straighter, now, one hand on his forehead as he listens. He’s distraught, stressed, and you can tell by his reaction he thinks what you did was stupid, too.

“What happened?” he asks.

“He… he didn’t exactly _kick_ me out,” you say. “He more… he asked me to leave so he could have some space and some time to think. He said he’d call or text or whatever. Get in touch somehow. I don’t know when. Today, sometime, I hope, even if it’s late.”

“If that’s what he said, that’s what he’ll do. He’s a man of his word.”

“I know.” You push your hair out of your face, ignoring the partially dried paint at the ends of your fingers that sticks the strands together. It’s nearly completely silver, now. “In the meantime, though, waiting for whatever he’s going to say is _terrifying_. What if he doesn’t want to see me again?” Your voice cracks, but you don’t bother to try to hide it.

“I don’t think he’d do that,” Kyle says. “I mean, you guys are pretty close.”

“He said he likes me more than he should,” you say. “Whatever the hell that means.”

Kyle covers his mouth as he thinks, then slides his hand back onto his knee. “I don’t know,” he says.

“I don’t want this to ruin our friendship.” You finally pick up the paintbrush by your foot and go to the sink to wash it off and clean up your hands.

All Kyle says is a noncommittal, “Hm.”

* * *

 

You keep your phone on you all day so you know you’ll hear it when it Chayton finally gets in touch. 2:00, nothing. 5:00 nothing. 6:00, nothing. Then, finally, a little after 6:30, he sends you a text while you’re eating dinner. You pull your phone out of your pocket and unlock it.

_I’m sorry again for the way I acted this morning. Can we meet somewhere? Your place, my place, somewhere in between? I’m not picky._

Your fingers tighten on the phone so hard you could snap it in half. You look up at your friends, still eating, but slower, now, watching you. Lola and Cricket, sitting on either of Kyle’s sides, both send him glances. Kyle looks at you. You nod and stand.

“Sorry, guys, excuse me a minute.”

When you hear Kyle’s low, murmuring voice behind you as you head back to your room, you know he’s bringing them up to speed.

You’re about to tell Chayton you can meet up at the coffee shop off the train stop where you went that first night. But then you think, you need to do this on your own terms. You need to be in the safety of your home to do this, to deal with his rejection, even if it doesn’t mean the end of your friendship. And he said that was okay, so you text him back with, _Can you come over to my place? Any time is fine. We’re eating dinner but we’ll be done by the time you get here even if you leave right now._ Which you’re not expecting him to do.

He texts back, _All right. I’ll be on my way in about ten minutes._

_You can let yourself in through the garage. It’s open._

You wait a couple of minutes, but you hear nothing back, so you slide your phone back in your pocket and head back out to the living room table. Everyone looks up at the sound of your footsteps. They all look sad, even a little hurt.

“I’m so sorry, baby,” Lola says. You shrug and sit back in front of your plate.

“I shouldn’t have said anything in the first place,” you say. “Thinking it would go anywhere was stupid.”

“No, it wasn’t.” It’s Cricket, this time. You look up at zir from your fork. “You had every right to tell him how you feel, and from what Kyle says, it sounded like you weren’t pushy about it. Chayton just --” Zir mouth snaps closed. “Sorry,” zie says. “That’s not my problem to tell.”

“He told me,” you whisper. “At least, if we’re talking about the same thing.”

Cricket nods, but still doesn’t elaborate on what zie was going to say.

“He’s coming over,” you say. “To talk. He’s leaving in about ten minutes, so he’ll probably be here by 7:15. I told him to come in through the garage.”

You try to at least finish the food on your plate, but your stomach is twisting and fluttering and churning and you’re woozy at even the thought of eating right now. You give up and up pull a piece of plastic wrap over it, putting it in the fridge for later.

“I’ll do the cleanup tonight,” you say, because you need to keep your hands and mind occupied. You do the dishes by hand instead of messing with the dishwasher, you wipe down the table and counters and stove, and as you’re finishing up, you hear the back door by the muck room open. Your breath catches. It’s Chayton. It has to be. Nobody else has gone outside since dinner.

“Hello?” he calls out. His voice is soft and tentative.

“Hey,” you call back. Your voice catches and you silently curse at yourself. You exit the kitchen to see him standing in the doorway between the muck room and the living room.

He gives you a small, nervous smile. “Hey.”

He looks different. He looks small, unsure, like he’s shrunk into himself since you saw him this morning, even if his shoulders and back are straight. It kills you, because you’re the one who made him feel that way.

“Kick off your shoes and come on in,” you say. “We have some leftovers if you’re hungry? I just put them away so they won’t be cold yet.”

He shakes his head and waves his hand in front of his face. “I’m okay.” He knocks off his shoes and pushes them up against the wall with his foot. He slips off his gloves and sticks them in his pocket. He leaves his hoodie on. You both stand there awkwardly for a few minutes, then, finally, you break the silence. “So I guess… I guess we’ve got a lot to talk about.”

“Yeah.”

“Why don’t we go back to my room?” You take a step backward, in that direction. “You know, privacy.”

He nods, and he follows you.

The quiet click of the door closing is so _loud_. The tension is so thick it muffles the creak of the hardwood floors. You sit down on the edge of the bed, knees pressed together, toes pointed in at each other.

“You can sit down,” you offer. “Bed or floor or bean bag chair. Whatever’s most comfortable.”

He sits down beside you, and that gives you hope. Maybe you haven’t completely screwed this up. Your hand twitches as you almost lift it, ready to put it on his knee like you always would have before, but that might not be okay now. You stay put.

“I’m sorry, March,” he starts. You’re about to tell him he can stop apologizing, but he doesn’t give you the moment to interrupt. “I…” He trails off and hooks his loose-flowing hair behind his ear. The way his fingers move is still so sure, even if the rest of him isn’t. He drops his hand back into his lap and links his fingers together. He starts over. “I’m sorry I made you think you were the reason I was upset. It’s my own stupid hangups and insecurities and I threw it all back on you because I didn’t know where else to put it. That was bullshit. You didn’t deserve that.”

He takes in a deep, shaky breath. You nudge your knee against his, gently. He pushes his back into you. You don’t smile, but you relax a bit.

“Over the past few months you’ve become one of my best friends, and I care about you so much,” he says. “To an extent I’m pretty sure I can’t say that’s all you are. And that scared the shit out of me because, ever since I was diagnosed, every relationship I’ve attempted to be in, they ended up bailing out on me once I told them because they couldn’t handle it. So I stopped telling people. Kyle and them know. My doctors, obviously. My parents.”

You bite your curious tongue. It’s the first time he’d ever explicitly mentioned his family.

“You,” he continues. “And I’m safe with you guys. But even though it scared me, and even though it hurt, I didn’t tell you how I felt because… because then nothing would change, and our friendship would be safe.”

“It still is,” you murmur. “If you want it to be.”

“Yeah.” His voice trembles. He takes in a slow, deep breath through his nose. He glances over at you and finally gives you a small, crooked smile. “It’s just that even with condoms I don’t feel safe to sleep with anyone or…” He pauses. “Although, you being ace would make that a complete non-issue.”

You smile back, chuckling softly before looking back down at your feet. “Not so much a curse for once,” you whisper.

“There’s nothing wrong with you,” he says. You look back up into his face. His brow is furrowed. “You know that, right?”

“I guess, yeah,” you say. “It is what it is. But in the beginning, everyone I’ve dated has said it’s okay, they don’t care, but then when it gets down to it, it’s too much for them to deal with. I don’t know if they think they’re going to be the one to ‘fix’ me or what, but… they’ve never been willing to even try to make it work. Not for real.”

Then _he_ rests his hand on _your_ knee, and you smile, and your laugh is quiet and choked, but it’s there, and it’s genuine.

“What are you thinking?” you ask.

You simultaneously look up into each other’s eyes.

“I’m thinking we’re both idiots.” The barest trace of a smile graces his lips. You smile back. “I’m thinking, I like you and you like me and you’re willing to look past my positive status and I don’t care if you’re ace. And I mean that. I could take or leave sex and be just as happy with or without.”

You smile and push your glasses up onto your head so you can wipe your eyes with the heel of your hand. Your chuckle is wet, but so, so happy.

“So, what are you saying, then?” you ask. You need to hear it out loud. You have to be sure you’re on the same page.

“I’m saying… if… if, after how I reacted, you still want to try, then… then we should try.” He swallows hard. His hand trembles on your knee. You take it, for the first time ever after wanting to for over a month. It’s callused on the heel and his fingers and it’s warm and a little damp and it’s perfect.

“I’d like that,” you say. You look up at each other again.

“Me, too.” Chayton’s warm brown eyes dart over your face, and finally, he says, “Is it okay if I kiss you? Like, is that something you like or no?”

You push your glasses back down to the bridge of your nose. The back of your neck and your ears burn hot in the cold room. “I’m okay with kissing,” you say, “as long as you’re not, like, shoving your tongue down my throat.”

He chuckles and says, “I can manage that.”

You lean closer to each other in stumbling, awkward movements. Your hand slips and you have to jerk back up to catch yourself. When you’re close enough for your foreheads to touch, he wraps his hand around the back of your neck.

When he kisses you, it’s soft and chaste, and it’s wonderful, and it’s perfect. You hadn’t imagined what it might be like, but this is everything you’d hoped for. His lips are hot and a little chapped and he runs his fingers through your hair down to the back of your neck to join his other hand and hold you close, and it makes you feel so _safe_.

_I think I love you_. But you keep it to yourself. You don’t want to have to pull away from him so you can speak. You don’t want to ruin this moment.

* * *

 

What you thought would be a ten or fifteen minute conversation turns into a two-hour one, cuddled up on the floor beside each other, occasionally stopping to kiss each other for a while (and wow, it’s nice, you’ve never been kissed the way he kisses you -- gentle and chaste, just lips on lips and wandering hands with no pressure or intent). At about 8:00, he pulls a box and water bottle out of his backpack. There’s a handful of pills inside and he takes them all in one go. Damn, you can barely even swallow a single aspirin some days.

“Is that --” you start. He nods and swallows.

“Yeah.”

“Do you always take them at this time?”

“Yeah.”

You frown in thought. “Why haven’t I seen you?”

He smiles at you and wipes some stray drops of water away from his mouth. “I’ve gotten good at finding reasons to excuse myself for a few minutes, and I guarantee I’ve done it when I’ve been hanging out with you.” He shrugs. “I don’t like taking them in front of people who don’t already know why I do, because they always ask invasive questions.”

“Yeah, I can see why you’d want to avoid that.”

It’s just past 9:00 now. You and Chayton lie cheek to cheek, head to head, as he throws and catches a crumpled up ball of newspaper. You talk about your mom and your brother, Matcha, and when he asks about your dad, you explain he’s been out of the picture since you were four, the year Matcha was born.

“What about your parents?” you ask. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you talk about them.”

Chayton sighs. “It’s complicated,” he finally says.

“I’ve got all night,” you offer.

He chuckles.

“I was adopted,” he starts. “When I was a baby. I don’t remember anything before my parents. That’s how young I was.” He pauses. You stay quiet, giving him time. Finally, he says, “They were insistent I not be ‘too Native’. I needed to be white enough to fit in with the rest of the neighborhood, the school, whatever. So they raised me without any attachment to whatever culture I’m from.”

You turn your head, cheek on the cold wood floor as you look at his upturned face. His sharp nose and cheekbones, his long profile, thick black eyebrows and messy black hair splayed around his head and neck.

“You know, I don’t even know where my name is from?” Chayton says. He tosses the ball of paper up at the ceiling again, catches it. You tilt your head to look at him better. “My parents gave it to me because they wanted me to have at least one link, something subtle that wouldn’t give me away. They said it’s Sioux but I’m not sure I believe them. When I googled it, mostly vague ‘Native American baby names’ links came up. One thing came up about the Lakota, but only one, so I don’t know how accurate that was. They won’t even tell me where I came from.” He tosses the ball again. This time, he misses, and it falls on your forehead. It rolls to the floor beside your face and you toss it onto his chest.

“Even my street name,” he says. “It came from a book I read once. Do you have any idea what that feels like?” he asks. He picks up the paper ball, but doesn’t toss it again. His fingers tighten around it. “To not know where you’re from and to have parents who don’t care enough to remember? If they even knew in the first place.” He sighs and his hands loosen. The ball falls to his chest.

“They weren’t bad parents,” he says. “I always had everything I needed and most of the things I really wanted. They don’t know about my street art but they were always supportive of my designing and silk screening. They didn’t try to force me when I said I didn’t want to go to college and wanted to figure myself out on my own, do my own thing. They even supported me after I told them I was positive, even though they knew it was because I was an irresponsible junkie. They helped me get clean and turn myself around. They’re good people. It’s just… ”

He sighs.

“I’m just a selfish asshole, I guess.”

“You’re not,” you say. “You feel displaced. You’re kind of straddling two cultures. I get that. My mom was Korean and my dad was white. Not the same, but… like, you don’t really fit in either place, you know? I’m sure the rest of the world doesn’t make it easy on you. “

“They really don’t,” he chuckles. “I guess being ace and trans probably makes you feel the same way sometimes, yeah? On top of being biracial?”

“I don’t know about the same,” you say. “But, like, you have people around you who you love and who love you, but you still feel kind of… alone. Not _wrong_ , exactly, but… not exactly right, either.”

“Yeah.”

You fall into silence. Chayton starts tossing the ball up toward the ceiling again.

Midnight comes, eventually, and if Chayton wants to get home tonight, he has to leave soon before the bus stops running. He pauses for a long, long moment, then finally says,

“I’d rather stay here. If you’d be okay with that. Last night was really nice.”

“Yeah, of course!” You’re beaming. You’d wanted to invite him but didn’t know how, and he’s taken care of it for you. “Do you have any morning meds you might need?”

“In my bag,” he says. “I always take two doses with me anywhere I might go. In case I’m out late or end up crashing at someone else’s place.”

“Do you have pajamas in there, too?”

“That I don’t,” he laughs.

You stand and walk to your little clothing piles in the plastic bucket in the corner. The next piece of furniture you save up for is definitely going to be a dresser. You pull out one of your bigger t-shirts and a pair of lounge pants and drop them on his chest. He sticks his tongue out at you.

“I don’t know if they’ll fit, because you’re taller and broader, but you can try, if you want.”

“All right,” he laughs. He throws the clothes over his shoulder and heads to the bathroom to change.

The few minutes he’s gone, you poke around at your pillows and your bed, trying to maximize the space, because you can easily sprawl out and take up the whole thing on your own (and you often do). Although, tonight, you won’t have to cling to a pillow, you can cuddle with your boyfriend. Boyfriend. Oh, God, Chayton is your _boyfriend_! Right?

You change into your own pajamas and finish pulling your t-shirt over your head when Chayton comes back in. You pull down and adjust the hem. He’s wearing your pants, but his own t-shirt.

He tugs on the shoulder. “Yours was too small.”

“I thought it might be. Just drop it on the pile. I’ll deal with it later.”

He folds it up and puts it on top of your shirt pile. You plug in the fairy lights in the corner behind your bed.

“Flip the lights?” you ask. He does so.

“This is nice,” he says. You look up at the hundreds of tiny lights falling from the ceiling, like a waterfall made of stars.

“And the bed’s comfortable,” you say. You look back down at him. “So at least I can offer those two things.”

You pull up your laptop and start some music, your entire collection on random play, and put it down on the floor beside you. The first song is one by Pavement you can never remember the title of.

“Hipster,” Chayton laughs. He gently nudges your head with the palm of his hand, then sits down beside you and kisses your temple. You roll your eyes, but you’re smiling.

You sit shoulder to shoulder for a while, just talking. Eventually your head starts to get heavy and Chayton starts to wobble forward a bit, so you lie down. You curl up in each other, legs tangled, your arm around his waist and his around your shoulder. The warmth of his breath and the softness of his shirt and the dull shine of his skin are all perfect, and for the first time in your life, you’re exactly where you need to be.

You wake up to an empty bed and a dark room. Only the fairy strings above your head give you any light. Whatever time is, it’s before 6:00.

When you walk into the living room, you can hear and smell the bubbling coffeepot over in the kitchen. You peek around the corner. Chayton is leaning back against the counter opposite the coffee maker, playing with his phone.

“Morning,” you say.

He slips his phone in his pocket and smiles. “Morning.”

You step up beside him and he curls his arm around your waist and kisses the corner of your mouth. It’s so natural, like you’ve been doing it for years. You yawn and wrap your arms around him, resting your forehead on his shoulder. Neither of you speak; you just sway softly in each other’s arms. You don’t move immediately when the coffee maker beeps. Only when another pair of footsteps approaches the kitchen do you stand up straight, but you don’t move your hands away. Lola comes around the corner. She smiles at you and pulls down three coffee cups. She hands one to each of you and pours a cup for herself.

“I’m so glad you guys were able to work it out,” she says. “I was so worried about both of you for a while there.” She presses a kiss to the top of your head, then one to Chayton’s forehead. You both laugh. “I love you two dorks,” she says. “I want you both to be happy.”

You smile and kiss Chayton’s cheek and he runs his fingers through your hair, then kisses the corner of your mouth. You love how _undemanding_ he is. His kisses are so kind and gentle, like… here, have a quick reminder of how much I care about you, with no strings attached.

The three of you lounge around the couch in front of the TV watching one of Lola’s superhero movies. Eventually Cricket joins you, then Kyle, and the five of you together go through another two pots of coffee.

It’s just past noon when you get the call. Your painting at the coffee shop has been sold, and you can come in to pick up your check any time today.

“Do you have anything else you’d like to sell?” Nikki, the manager in charge of your transactions, asks. “We have room for two more in the same size.”

“I think so,” you say. “For the same price?”

“Sounds good.”

“I’ll be in to drop them off and pick up my check later today.”

“See you then!”

So you pack up your portfolio with four more paintings they can pick out of, zip it up, and head out the door. Chayton goes with you because it’s on his way home, and he wants to be there when you receive your first check.

“It’s definitely a milestone,” you say. “I lived almost entirely on commissions before I fell into that rut. Maybe if business continues to go well I can sell out of coffee shops and galleries exclusively.”

“Dream big!” Chayton laughs. You chuckle and shrug. He smiles and runs his fingers through your hair. “You have the talent to do it, though. You’ve just got to find the places looking to sell.”

“Well, thank you.” You know he’s not just saying that because he’s your boyfriend and he has to. He said it the first time he saw your work, before you had any emotional attachment at all, so you know he means it.

You keep curled in and tucked around your portfolio because it’s just a thin vinyl sleeve with a zipper and you don’t want anything inside damaged by people’s bags or knees or whatever. When you finally get to your stop, you stretch out and breathe the crisp autumn air in deep. The cold snap is over and you no longer need gloves and scarves, just hoodies.

Instead of going straight to the manager, you get in line for a cup of coffee. Chayton takes your hand casually, like it’s the most natural thing he could do. His hand is cold against yours, and the sleeve of his hoodie brushes the heel of your hand, soft and warm. He kisses your temple and you talk and laugh about nothing in particular. You fall against him laughing when he makes a joke, and then you reach the front of the line and you stand up straight.

That’s when you see the cashier. Short, thin, wavy brunette hair pulled back in a playful ponytail. Heart shaped face and big green eyes.

It’s Jessie. Your ex-girlfriend. Who broke up with you because you refused to stop your hormone therapy. What’s she doing here? You’ve never seen her here before. Did she just get hired?

“Hi,” you say. _Make it quick, just order and pay and go. Don’t give her the chance to say anything._ “Can I get a --”

“So, March, what? You’re straight now?” she interrupts. Her voice is harsh, cutting, accusing. Like it would be a bad thing even if it _were_ true. _I’m ace and biromantic,_ you want to say, but you’re not going to let yourself get pulled back into her stupid, petty games.

You close your eyes, gritting your teeth so you won’t flinch. _Let it roll off. Let it go. She’s not important anymore._ You wipe your nose with one cold, pink hand to stall for time while you try to figure out what to say, if you should say anything, if you should even _acknowledge_ it. You should ignore it, you decide, but Chayton’s pushed past you so gently you didn’t even notice it. His hands are hard on the counter, his arms straight and taut, and he says, “I want to talk to your manager.”

You take his elbow and gently pull him back. “Chay, it’s fine, ignore her --”

He pulls away from you and slams his hand back down on the counter. “Now. Please.” His words are polite but his voice is shaking with anger. Your own hands are shaking with nerves.

“I am the manager,” she says.

“No, you’re not. I’ve been coming here regularly for four years. I know all of the management in this place, and that does not include you.”

Her smile is like aspartame, fake and overly sweet. Her eyes are tense. What, was she not expecting you to get upset and complain?

“I’ll be right back,” she says coolly. She pokes the front half of her body into the swinging door and calls out something you can’t make out.

“She’ll be right out,” she says. “If you could please step to the side while I help the other customers behind you?”

“Can we please order our drinks?” Chayton says.

You order and she rings you up, and as you put your change back in your wallet, Chayton shoots her one last glare. You’re not even angry anymore. You’re ashamed because of what she said and you’re embarrassed by the scene Chayton is making, even though, you know, if you were in his shoes and it had happened to Cricket or Lola, you’d be doing exactly the same thing. But they wouldn’t be afraid to defend themselves like you are.

“March!” You look over your shoulder to the woman coming out of the door beside the drink counter. Tall, chubby, with bright red hair and an even brighter smile.

“Nikki, hi!” A little of the tension melts out of your shoulders.

“Are you here to pick up your check?”

Something clatters behind you and you look back. Jessie’s dropped a tin of tea leaves on the counter and is trying to sweep them back into the container.

“Yeah.” But you fumble the word as it comes out of your mouth. Nikki’s smile fades.

“Are you all right?”

“Yeah, it’s just… something --”

“You still want to sell your work with us, right?” she asks. “We adore your work, and so do the patrons. A lot of people ask about you.”

Your shoulders perk up and you finally look straight into her face. “Yeah?”

“Yeah! Have you thought about making business cards?”

You look over to Chayton. He could probably help you design something. But he’s frowning, and his brow is furrowed as he glares at Jessie over behind the counter.

“Well,” she says, “I’ll go get your check, all right? Be right back.” She pats your arm and disappears back through the door again.

“March --”

“Chay, listen,” you interrupt. “ _Please_.”

His brow knits together tight, but he closes his mouth and nods.

“Nobody here knows I’m trans,” you say. “None of the management or anyone. Nobody but Jessie. And I want to keep it that way.”

Chayton starts to open his mouth and you hold up your hand.

“I know, I _know_ I should say something,” you say. “But… what if they don’t want to work with me anymore because of it?”

The barista calls out your drinks, but you don’t move yet.

“If Jessie says something to anyone else here, I’ll take it as it comes. I’m not going to lie about it. But I’d rather not volunteer the information to anyone who doesn’t need to know. I just want to be some guy who paints art for their walls. I don’t want people thinking any differently of me because I happen to be trans.”

Chayton huffs hard through his nose and looks away, but finally nods.

“Yeah, all right,” he says. “You’re right. I shouldn’t have a say in who you do or don’t come out to.”

You swallow hard and grip the front of your hoodie like it’s the only thing that can ground you. Why is he so angry?

“Chayton, please,” you start, but he gently eases your hand away from your hoodie and wraps it in his own.

“Sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. I didn’t mean for it to come out sarcastic. I’m being sincere. It’s your decision and I respect that, even if I do disagree.”

You finally turn and grab your drinks, handing Chayton his Americano and taking a sip of your soy mocha. Nikki pops back out of the door and hands you your check. You look at the number and the spelling of your name to make sure everything is right, then say, “I brought four pieces, if you want to sit down somewhere and look at them. See which two you think would be easiest to sell.”

“The one you had with us before was really popular. A lot of people asked about it, but couldn’t afford to buy it.”

“I can’t go much lower,” you say. “Maybe by $25.”

“We’re not asking you to,” she says. “We know this is how most of our artists make their living.”

“All right,” you say. You unzip your portfolio and set the paintings on the table for her to look through.

You discuss technique and value and pricing, and Nikki eventually settles on a painting of a small fae boy with a flower crown and a young woman smelling a bouquet of flowers. It’s not the kind of thing you’d normally paint for yourself, but other people seem to love it, and if it sells, it helps pay the bills. Afterward, you and Chayton head back to the bus, to get to the train station where you’ll part ways.

You pull the check out of your wallet and snap it proudly, bumping Chayton’s arm with yours.

“My first sale since coming out of my slump,” you grin. “And they only had the painting for four days before it moved! That’s pretty awesome.”

“That _is_ awesome,” Chayton grins. He tousles your hair and knuckles your shoulder. “I’m really happy for you. Proud of you, too. It’s not easy to get into selling your own work.”

When you get to the train stop, you each go up the opposite stairs, you going back toward O’Hare, him going to the Loop. You pass the time waving and making stupid faces at each other, but then your train comes, so you hop on and make your way back home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And this is the end of part one! Part two begins next week!
> 
> Come visit me on tumblr at [indecentpause](http://indecentpause.tumblr.com/) for moodboards, excerpts, and playlists for upcoming work!


	7. Chapter 7

**PART TWO**

 

 

The call comes at seven in the morning. You slowly wake to the sound of your ringtone, groggy, reaching over and knocking your phone to the ground.

“Shit,” you murmur. You prop yourself up on one elbow and squint, bleary-eyed, trying to follow the sound.

Weeks with Chayton turned into months, turned into a year, turned into more, and you’re still together in a way that feels both brand new and old and comfortable. Things have gotten much better for you, financially. You can afford to have a fully furnished room and buy extra, unnecessary, but nice to have supplies for your work. And your life with Chayton is so much more _complete_ , because your friends are so awesome, but you need that emotional connection in your life, too, with just the right amount of physical contact.

You fumble your phone and finally slide the answer bar to the side.

“H’lo?”

“Sorry. Were you sleeping?” It’s Chayton.

“I was, but I’m awake now. What’s up? It’s kind of early for you to be calling.”

“I know.”

As you start to wake up and the fuzz clears from your head, you start to realize his voice sounds _off_. Something is wrong.

“So you know how I had that doctor’s appointment?” he asks.

You’re awake. You jerk up straight and slide on your glasses. “What’s going on?”

“My T-cell count is low.” His voice is soft, choked. “Like, _really_ low.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I’m dying, March.”

Your hand shoots to your mouth. The world stops. The bed jerks from underneath you and you plummet to the floor fast and hard as a freight train. Your chest constricts. You can’t breathe. Suddenly you’re cold and sweating and your stomach churns.

Words finally come.

“Oh my God. Chay.”

“Yeah.” His shuddering breath is audible.

“How did this happen? You were fine!”

“Somewhere along the lines my medication stopped being as effective as it needed to be,” he says. “And since I was doing so well for so long and didn’t feel sick, we weren’t checking my levels frequently enough to tell until it was too late. I should’ve pressed to get them checked more often but… I didn’t think I needed it, either. I’m an idiot.”

“No, you’re not.” Your voice is gentle, like he needs to be gentle with himself.

All he responds with is a noncommittal “Mm.”

For a while, you sit silently on the phone, listening to each other breathe. Finally, he asks, “Is everyone else home?”

“Let me check. I just woke up.”

You pull on a t-shirt, awkwardly maneuvering around your phone. First you peek into the kitchen. Kyle and Lola are there.

“Hey, do you guys work today?”

“I do, at noon,” Kyle says. Lola shakes her head. You nod. She starts to ask,

“What --”

You hold up your hand. _When I’m off the phone._ She falls silent.

“And is Cricket here?”

“Sleeping,” she says.

You nod and take your phone back to your room.

“They’re all here,” you say. “Kyle works at noon, so if you want to see him you’ll have to come over before that.”

“Okay. As soon as we’re off the phone I’ll be on my way.”

“Okay.”

“And March?”

“Yeah?”

“I love you, okay?”

“I love you, too.” Your voice breaks, but you just manage to patch it and get it to come out normal. When you hang up the phone you nearly break down in tears, because you knew he did. He’d never said it and didn’t have to, but if he’s saying it now… he doesn’t know how much longer he has. Maybe a few years, if you’re lucky. A few months if you’re not. That’s probably what he’s going to talk about when he comes over.

You need to go back into the kitchen and tell Lola and Kyle that Chayton is on his way over to talk about something serious, but your body is so heavy, like lead weights have been stitched into your wrists and knees and ankles. You can’t even find the strength to lie down. You sit, staring at the cold, late November morning outside your window, the bare tree branches and the dying grass out front. Your room is dim, only the fairy lights on, the sunlight outside hidden by heavy cloud cover. You haven’t put plastic over the windows yet. The freezing air leaks through the edges.

You don’t move, you don’t think, you don’t react, you barely breathe as you sit there. Your head doesn’t know how to process it, so it doesn’t process anything at all.

Almost everything stops, but your heart keeps going too fast, like it’s trying to punch its way out of your chest.

Someone knocks at the door. You don’t turn.

“What’s going on?” It’s Kyle. He sits down beside you and wraps his arm around your shoulders, and everything breaks. The tears come out full force: thick, heavy, sobbing, choking, gasping crying.

“Rabbit?” Kyle’s voice is tinged with hysteria. “Rabbit?”

You can’t find the words to reply. The only thing that comes out is sobbing.

“ _March_!” The volume of Kyle’s voice and his use of your real name shocks you still for long enough to stammer Chayton’s name. But you choke and gasp over it like it’s a tangible thing inside you, something you grip to so hard your knuckles turn white but that slips away anyway.

“What about him?” Kyle’s voice is clipped and stern but as gentle as it can be in that tone. “March, what happened?”

“I’m sorry.” You manage to start heaving words out. “He was the one on the phone. His T-cell count is so low he’s dying --”

But that’s all you can manage before you break down again. You have to get this out now, before Chayton gets here. He can’t see you like this. You need to be strong for him. You need to be his support.

“Oh my God.” Kyle’s whisper is barely audible over your sobs. They rack your whole body. Your stomach tenses and aches like you’ve been throwing up for hours. Your vision is blurred and your head pounds like steel on concrete. You crumble.

By the time Chayton’s knock comes at the door, you’ve mostly composed yourself. Your face is puffy and your eyes are bright red and it’s obvious you’ve been crying, but he has to be expecting that. At least you aren’t crying now.

Kyle sits you down on the couch with Lola and answers the door to give you a moment to compose yourself. She hugs you. She kisses your forehead.

“I’m going to go get Cricket,” she says. “We’ll both be right back.”

Kyle and Chayton walk in side by side. Chayton’s shoulders are slumped, his eyes ringed in black and purple bruises. Did he get any sleep last night? When did he get the news? You had assumed this morning, but if he hasn’t slept…

You rush him, grabbing him in the tightest hug your cry-weakened arms can manage. He wraps his arms around your waist and you bury your noses in each other’s necks, as if you can hide there in each other, away from reality and away from the world. His skin is warm.

“I love you,” he whispers. When his breath brushes your neck, it takes everything inside you to not break down again.

“I love you.” It’s wobbly and it catches in your throat, but at least it comes out dry.

Lola leads a still half-asleep Cricket out of their bedroom. Zie rubs at zir eyes, zir face. Everyone sits, you and Chayton on the ground on one side of the coffee table, everyone else on the couch on the other. You pull your knees up to your chest. Chayton spreads his legs out under the table, reconsiders, and pulls his knees up, too. You lean into his shoulder, laying all your weight against him. He rests his cheek atop your head.

The room is silent. The only sound is the hum of the heater through the vents.

“Okay,” Chayton says. “It’s clear most of you know what’s going on by your silence. But just in case not everyone knows, my T-cell count dropped.”

Cricket’s hand shoots to zir mouth. Kyle swallows hard and closes his eyes. Lola bites her lip.

You are not so composed. You turn, curling into Chayton, wrapping around him tightly, like if you hold on hard and long enough, you can fix it.

“A lot,” he continues. “And it happened so fast that…” He swallows hard and curls his hand around yours, up at his shoulder. “And it probably won’t get better. I probably have… anywhere from nine months to three years, most likely, as long as I keep up my treatment. I might get lucky. Maybe I’ll hang around a little longer. I don’t know, honestly. We know how it used to be like, ten years ago, but not much about what it is now. HIV usually stays HIV now.” He looks up.

“Kyle.”

Kyle opens his eyes and looks up from his hands, holding tight to each other in his lap.

“I want a DNR, and I want you to be my guy,” Chayton says.

“Wh --”

“I can’t trust my parents to do what I want,” he says. Your hand drops to his knee, tightens there, and he curls his fingers around your knuckles. His hands are clammy. They shiver.

“I need someone I can trust,” he continues. “And I know you’re that guy. When it’s my time to go, I want to go. Don’t try to keep me here.”

Kyle’s eyes are glassy, his jaw tight. But he nods.

“I want all of you, jointly, to take my art stuff.” Your hand spasms and tightens. No, why is he talking about this already? He said he could still have three years, maybe even more!

“The silkscreening stuff, the paint, the inks, all of it is yours to do with what you will. Of everyone I know -- not that that’s many people,” he chuckles. “But out of everyone, you guys will get the most use out of it. I’ll write up a living will with all this in it, but --”

“Chayton, stop it.” You choke on the heavy tears dripping, burning down the back of your throat. He looks at you. His face is sad, but as calm as you’ve ever seen it, and you realize, he’s been preparing for this for eight years, ever since it was HIV. But you haven’t prepared for it at all.

“March --”

“ _No_.” It comes out a sharp sob. “No, you can’t lie down and give up like this --”

“I’m not giving up, March,” he whispers. He gently strokes your hair away from your face. This isn’t right. You should be comforting him. Chayton needs you and you’re --

“But now it’s just a matter of time. HIV is one thing. You can be okay for years, even decades. I only even progressed to AIDS two years ago, because I couldn’t always get my meds for a while. But a low T-cell is a different monster. I could make it… maybe a couple years, depending on treatment, if everything works out. But it’s possible it could only be a matter of months. I just want to be sure everything is in order now, while I still have the cognitive function to take care of it. I’m still going to take my meds. I’m going to keep seeing my doctor. But now it’s not a matter of if anymore, it’s a matter of when, and we have to be ready.”

You shake your head, lips pressed tightly together because you can’t find the words you want. Your eyes squeeze closed and you bury your face in your hands.

“No,” you finally murmur, almost petulantly.

The room around you is silent. Then Chayton wraps his arms around you and pulls your forehead to his shoulder. You wrap your arms around him and sob into his neck like a child with a broken knee.

You spend the rest of the morning talking. You talk about Chayton’s medical care and what will change, you talk about where and to whom his things will go, you talk about his living will and who will be his power of attorney.

He picks Kyle, because he knows you, and he knows you might not be able to let him go when it’s time. You respect that. He’s right.

Eventually, Kyle has to leave for work with the promise the conversation will continue as soon as possible. For a few minutes, everyone is silent. Finally, Chayton says, “I didn’t get any sleep last night. Do you mind if I take a nap?”

“Of course not,” you say. “Do you want the couch or the bed?”

“The couch?” he asks. “Maybe we can all stay out here for a while?”

Lola and Cricket smile sadly. They both nod.

“Of course, baby,” Lola whispers.

The next few weeks are a blur of paperwork and legal and medical jargon you’ll never understand. Three years, Chayton said. That’s a long time, but not long at all. But he’s acting like he has months. You know it’s a possibility, but it’s not a likelihood, right?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to the beginning of part two! It's gonna be rough. I'm sorry. (No I'm not.)
> 
> Come visit me at [my tumblr](http://indecentpause.tumblr.com/) for excerpts of upcoming projects, Shakespeare memes, and the occasional short story! I hope to see you there!


	8. Chapter 8

It’s too cold and the snow is too heavy to go out and paint or wheatpaste, so you spend most of your time indoors, silkscreening and drinking coffee or hot chocolate and talking. You talk about everything, even things you’ve never said aloud before.

He tells you about his heroin addiction when he was seventeen. How he started smart but eventually got desperate and reused shared needles. He tells you about the way his heart dropped through his feet like a concrete block when he got his positive results back, and how his parents held him when he cried, being faced with his own mortality, even though he was a grown man and it was his own stupid decisions that led him there.

You tell him about your mom’s suicide. About how she was never quite right, mentally, but you just thought she was a little weird, a little quirky. You didn’t realize she was on anti-depressants and abusing painkillers until you found her note beside the empty bottles, that simply said, “I love you both. You’ll do great things. I’m sorry I won’t be there to see them.” You were nineteen, your brother fifteen. He went to live in Wyoming with an aunt and uncle, and eventually moved on to that commune. You stayed in Chicago. That was the first time you moved into the house with your friends and the start of your jumping from place to place as you tried to find somewhere you could call home.

And you finally have, in Chayton. You didn’t realize home could be a person as much as it could be a place. And now you have to start preparing to lose him, too.

* * *

 

You celebrate your two-year anniversary in Oak Park. Chayton brings his backpack, full of posters and brushes and stickers and paste, and you wear the green button-down shirt you borrowed from him and never gave back, a little loose in the shoulders. _It brings out your eyes_ , he says.

But you don’t come out to paint or paste. You come out for a coffee date at the new bakery that just opened up. It’s nicer than what you’re used to, the brick walls and the sounds of trains overhead and dim lighting. Here, they’re made of shiny stainless steel and beautiful wrought iron and pretty, tiny confections lined up in perfect order, cupcakes and macarons and croissants.

“Two years,” Chayton smiles.

“Two years.”

You clink your cups together, porcelain on glass, and each take a sip from your coffees. You put your glass down and take his empty hand, pressing a kiss to his palm, then to his wrist. For a few moments, you hold him there, lips on skin. He curls his fingers in and drops his hand.

“I love you,” he whispers. Ever since his T-cells dropped, he’s gotten so much freer with his emotions, so much more open with his thoughts. He wears everything out on his sleeve for all the world to see, because he doesn’t have much time left. One year counted down, so fast, much too fast. Potentially two more to go.

You smile. “I love you.”

When you’re done with your coffee and cupcakes, you head out to the wall where you pasted the alien posters that first night. They’ve been worn down by the weather, by the sun and the rain and the wind. The colors have faded and all of them are ripped. But most of them are still partially there, hanging from the brick wall, tattered and flapping in the breeze.

* * *

 

It happens on a cold, snowy Sunday afternoon, the kind of dim, grey day that’s perfect for staying inside with a cozy blanket and a mug of hot chocolate. The kind of day that could be beautiful, given the right circumstances. The garage is cold, but you’re out there painting anyway when you get the call.

“I need you to come over. And Kyle, if he’s free.”

Chayton’s voice is thick and gravelly. His words come out wheezing. He clears his throat with every other word, as if he can cough the sickness out.

You whisper his name. For a moment, that’s all you can manage.

“It’s just a cold right now, I think.” He clears his throat again. “But we all know it won’t be forever. I’m going to do my best to kick it, obviously, but I want to go over everything with you two and make sure it’s all straight. Just in case.”

You nod, as if he can see you, and you know he can’t but you can’t speak because saying anything out loud will cement you in this moment, will make it real. Three months after your anniversary. To the day.

“March, are you there?”

“Yes,” you finally choke. You look over at your abandoned canvas, the wet paint shining in the dim light of the garage. “Kyle’s at work,” you continue. “Send him a text with whatever you want him to know. I’m sure he’ll be over as soon as he can.”

“Okay. Thank you.”

“I’m on my way, okay?”

“I love you, March.”

“I love you.” You hang up and cover your mouth to try to keep the sob in. It seems like you’ve hardly known him for any time at all. Like it was just last week he used to call you Art School.

Lola and Cricket are out who knows where, so you leave a message for them on the fridge. _Call Chayton._ And you grab your heavy coat, pull on your boots and scarf and gloves, and go.

The bus takes forever to trundle its way through the snow, but the trains are as quick, at least. At least winter means no construction traffic. When you arrive at Chayton’s door, you bounce on your toes both with nerves and to warm yourself. He pulls you in. You grab him in the tightest hug you can ever remember giving anyone, and even when he finally loosens his arms, you don’t, like if you don’t break the hug, maybe he won’t ever have to go.

“It’s okay,” he whispers. His skin and breath are too hot on your cheek, even though he’s wrapped up in a thick, warm hoodie. You kiss him anyway. You don’t care if you get sick. You can shake it, eventually.

“I love you,” you whisper. He curls his cold hands around your cheeks and you curl your gloved ones around his.

“I love you. Come inside.”

You stomp off the snow collected on the bottom of your boots in the hallway and kick them off by the door. “I texted Kyle,” Chayton says. “He’ll be on his way when he gets off in a few hours.”

“Cricket and Lola were out but I left them a note.” You pull off your gloves and loosen your scarf. His apartment is _freezing_. How is he so hot in such a cold place? “I figured you’d text them if you want to.”

“Let them do whatever they’re doing.” Chayton pulls his hoodie tighter around his chest. His thick, barking cough is heavy and hoarse. “They can get in touch with us when they get your note.”

“Is your heat out?”

“No. Why do you ask?”

“Chay, it’s _freezing_ in here. It’s nearly as cold as it is outside.”

He coughs into his curled hand again. You can hear the gurgle of fluid heading toward his lungs. If that happens --

“Is it?” he asks. “Sorry. I had it on earlier but I got too hot, then I turned it off and got too cold, and throwing on a hoodie seemed to be the best solution.”

“I’m turning it on.” You open the crawl hole behind the front door where the controls are kept and flip it on to 70 degrees.

“We can turn it down later if you need to.” You close the little door. “Chay, promise me you’ll keep the heat on at night, okay?”

“Yeah,” he says. “I have been.”

“Okay. Come on, let’s get you under the blanket.”

He shakes his head. “I need to sit up. I can’t breathe right if I’m lying down.”

You gather up the blanket from his bed and throw it around him, wrapping his shoulders and chest up tight. “Sit then,” you say. Your voice trembles. That means fluid has already started going into his lungs. Pneumonia might not be far off.

“Hey.” Chayton pokes one hand out from under the blanket and takes yours, pressing a kiss to your palm. “It’ll be okay.” But his hands shake, just like your voice, and you don’t know whether it’s sickness or cold or fear.

You grab another blanket from his pile in the corner and throw it loosely over his shoulders. He sits and you follow. You pull him into the crook of your arm and he leans his head against your chest.

“If I’m done in by a cold I’m going to demand God send me back and let me go again,” Chayton finally mutters. You can’t help but laugh at the dark joke, and he does, too.

“I don’t think so,” you say. “You’re too tough to be taken down by a cold.”

“Was.”

“What?”

“I _was_ too tough.”

“Don’t,” you whisper. You both fall quiet.

For a long time, you sit side by side, curled up in each other. His breathing is wheezy and wet, and with every forced breath, the tears you’ve managed to keep hidden back, back deep in your heart start to come forward, and finally you say, “I’m going to make you some soup or something, okay?”

He nods. His nose is dry and bright like fire, his lips chapped, and you say, “I’ll bring you some water, too.”

He props himself up against the wall and you pull his laptop closer in case he wants it while you poke around in his kitchen.

There’s no soup, but there’s broth, and there’s a bag of mixed vegetables in the freezer, and it’s better than nothing. You put it all together on the stove and let it heat, pacing the tiny kitchen in circles as you try to find something to keep your hands busy. Every time Chayton coughs in the other room, you flinch, and finally you _can’t_ anymore. You collapse against the wall on your shoulder and cover your mouth as you try to keep your tears silent.

A knock comes on the door. You breathe in deep and wipe your face, but when you answer, it’s just Kyle. He opens his mouth to ask what’s wrong, but you shake your head and put your finger to your lip. His eyes soften and he nods.

“He’s in the living room.” Your voice cracks. “I’ll be back in a minute. I’m just making some soup.”

Kyle enters the living room and you collapse against the wall, sliding down to curl into your knees, arms wrapped tight around your legs. The gas stove beside you hisses softly, the heat of the radiators inside the walls almost burns your back. You pull your phone from your pocket, but don’t look at it, yet. Finally, you open your contacts, and, still curled in on yourself, tuck the phone in between your chest and your knees as you scroll through the numbers. You stop at ‘B’. Becky and John. Two dull names of strangers who raised one of the most extraordinary people you know. Chayton gave you their number in case there was an emergency, but is this an emergency yet? Maybe not. But should you wait until it is one?

The soft bubbling of the broth on the stove catches your attention and you stand up, sliding your phone back in your pocket without dialing.


	9. Chapter 9

“Do you want to go out to Oak Park?”

You look up at Chayton from your marker doodles on the table. Over the past two years, the astronaut unicorns have been joined by cats on skateboards, juggling squirrels, and a narwhal with a top hat, among other things.

“Are you sure it’s not too cold?” Your brow draws down with concern. It’s been hitting the freezing mark the past few days. “Will you be able to breathe?”

“Better than I can cooped up inside,” Chayton says. “You going chicken on me, Art School?” He’s not coughing anymore, but his breathing is labored, his words come slow and wheezing. He should stay where it’s warm, away from the snow and biting winds. Pneumonia, the doctor said. She’d wanted to hospitalize him. He’d refused. _Not yet_ , he’d said. _There are still too many things left for me to do._

Even inside, with the heat on, he’s wrapped up in sweatpants and a heavy hoodie where you’re just fine in a t-shirt and boxers. You push your hair out of your face, but it falls right back in. There’s just one more streak of brown left, then you’ll be totally silver at twenty-five, just as Kyle predicted all that time ago.

“No way.” You force a grin. “I can keep up with anyone. Especially you.” You almost slap yourself when it comes out of your mouth, but he throws his head back and laughs, his thin throat flashing underneath the living room light.

“You’re the only one I’d ever let get away with that,” he chuckles. He slowly stands. The creaking of his joints is almost audible.

“I’m going to go change into some more suitable clothes.”

“Double up,” you call after him. “It’s below freezing.”

You need to change, too, but you let him get to it first, since he’s so much slower than you now. Is he expecting to go out pasting or tagging? He’s too slow now; if you were to have to run, he’d be fucked. But he comes out of your bedroom with his backpack slung over his shoulder. You frown.

“Just in case,” he says. “In case we’re out late and we come across a prime spot. I have stickers for right now, okay?”

* * *

 

You’re underground in the pedestrian tunnel between the Red and Blue line Jackson stops when he collapses. Your phone has no signal and at first everyone passing by thinks you’re comforting a drunk friend, but then you start yelling, clawing at the hems of people’s pants as they pass you, and they start to realize, _something is going on._

“I need a phone. Please. Please!” you shout. Nobody responds. A young man maybe your age starts to pass by and you latch onto his pants leg. He nearly trips and he turns back around to yell at you.

“Please.” Your voice is hoarse. His face turns from angry to scared.

“What --”

“My friend is really sick. He has a chronic illness. He fainted. Our phones don’t have signal.”

Chayton shifts in your lap. He groans. He was only out about thirty seconds, thank god.

“Please, can we use your phone? Nobody’s paying attention to us, and I --”

Your voice cracks and he shoves his phone in your hands. You only now notice the guitar slung over his shoulder.

“Yeah, man, yeah. Call whoever you need.”

Your fingers shake.

“911, where are you located?”

“I’m in the underground passage between the Jackson red and blue lines. My friend is AIDS positive and has pneumonia. He fainted. He didn’t hit his head and he’s not bleeding. He’s conscious now.”

“We’ll have someone there in a few minutes,” the calltaker says. “You’re sure he didn’t hit his head? How do you know?”

“I caught him and eased him to the ground.”

“Okay,” she says.

You glance over at the guy who loaned you the phone, who is now sitting beside you, carefully looking somewhere past his left foot to give you what privacy he can.

She says you don’t need to stay on the phone, so you give it back to the guy and say, “Thank you so much. Thank you.”

“Yeah,” he says. “Will you be okay until they get here?”

“Ugh,” Chayton grumbles. He rubs at his face. “What…”

“You fainted,” you whisper. You brush his hair out of his face and drag your knuckle down his cheek. “The ambulance is coming.”

His face tightens. “Why’d you call --”

“Because we need to get you to a doctor ASAP and we don’t know anyone with a car.”

“You guys gonna be okay?” You look back up at the man with the guitar. His eyes are worried, but he’s also glancing nervously at the crowd, like they’re going to get somewhere without him. He’s probably worried about missing his transfer.

“Yeah,” Chayton grumbles. He pushes himself up to sit beside you and leans heavily on your shoulder. “Oh,” he groans. “That was a bad idea.” He coughs, heavy and rattling in his chest. “Thanks for letting us use your phone, man.”

He sticks his phone back his pocket, then hesitates. He stands up beside you and far down at the red line end a commotion starts. He jumps up on his toes and shouts, “Over here! He’s over here!”

And then a paramedic arrives and the man darts off on his way.

She kneels down beside Chayton, grilling him for information, and he tries his best to answer but you have to do most of the talking because he’s still too fuzzy. She pulls out a walkie-talkie and buzzes her partner: “He didn’t hit his head. He’ll be okay on the stair chair.”

Her partner races down the stairs with a thin, metal-framed chair with wheels for feet, and they whisk him away.

* * *

 

The ER is cold and loud and shiny in the most uncomfortable way, but you not for a moment do you think of leaving Chayton alone. They run a lot of blood tests and they hook his chest up to some wires and put him on oxygen. The doctor lectures him about how he should have come in much sooner, how he shouldn’t have even given it the chance to get this bad. Chayton’s eyes drop and you grip his hand tight. The doctor’s eyes soften and she says, “Well, now you know. Don’t let it get this bad again.”

She checks his vitals one more time and leaves the room.

“Do you want me to call your parents?” you ask.

“I want you to get this shit off of me,” he grumbles, miming a tug at his oxygen mask. You bat his hand away.

“I don’t think so. You may have given her your DNR but you’re not even close to dying yet. You’re letting them treat you.” But you notice he doesn’t answer your question.

“Do you want me to call your parents?”

This time he shakes his head, slowly.

“Have you talked to them at all?”

“A little. They know I’m sick.”

“Have they come to visit you?”

“No. But that’s my fault. They’ve said they want to, but I keep insisting they don’t. It’s not bad enough yet. They live all the way down in Springfield. To make it worthwhile they’d have to take at least one or two days off work.”

“Chayton --”

“It’s fine.” His voice is low, quiet. You can barely hear it behind the mask and over the monitors.

“When was the last time you talked to them?”

“Maybe a month ago?”

“A _month_?” You’d barely go for days without talking to your mom back when she was still alive. A week would be pushing hard. Especially with something like this going on. You open your mouth to speak. Your gaze falls on his face. It’s turned down, his mouth slightly open behind the oxygen mask, pulled down in a frown.

“We haven’t talked much since I moved out on my own.”

“But I thought you got along with them? Well enough, at least?”

He sighs. “I had this boyfriend a number of years back,” he starts, and his voice is soft, and his shoulders are heavy, so you sit down beside him and start to ask him, “What?” But he continues.

“So, Mom and Dad had generally been supportive of pretty much everything, so I thought, well, I haven’t dated in ages and they’ll probably like to meet him and I knew they’d be surprised because at that point, I’d only brought home women, but, you know, no _big_ deal, right?”

“Right?” Your voice is soft, confused, afraid at where this seems to be going.

“So Mom says, ‘Well, I wasn’t expecting you to turn gay, but after your last girlfriend I guess I can understand why.’” He pauses and rolls his eyes. “My ex-girlfriend had been pretty terrible,” he explains, but then goes on to say, “But that’s _so offensive_ on so many levels, and I try to explain to her, no, Mom, I’m bisexual. I still like women sometimes. I’m just not dating one right now. So then she _freaks out_ , with all the typical biphobic stereotypes, you know, nothing new. And she still feels that way. She only talks to me because my dad makes us, and she always finds some way to stick some jab at my sexual orientation in.”

You swallow, hard. How did you not know this? You’ve been together for so long. Why did he never tell you? But of all the questions you could ask, the one that comes out is, “But… she’d want to know about something like this, right? I mean… she’s your _mom._ You said yourself she wants to come see you. This is serious medical stuff, Chay, this isn’t a bloody nose or a broken bone. You could be --” You choke on your words, because you still haven’t said it out loud. But it finally hits you, hard, here in the quiet ER room with the beeping of the heart monitor and the soft hiss of the oxygen and the footsteps outside the curtain acting as a door.

“You could be dying,” you whisper.

“I am dying,” he whispers. “Let’s be real. If it’s gotten this bad, I’m probably not going to get better.”

You press his hand hard against your mouth and nose, like you can absorb him through osmosis and take away all the disease and all the pain, but you can’t, and you never could, and you’ll never be able to.

It takes hours of wheedling and arguing and pauses when doctors and nurses come in and out, but you finally manage to convince Chayton to call his parents as the doctor comes back for the first time in almost an hour.

“We’re going to admit you for a few days,” she says. “Get some fluids in you, get you stable, make sure your breathing gets a little stronger. We’ll start a round of medication and --”

“How likely am I to get any better?” he interrupts.

Your hand tightens on your phone, Chayton’s parents’ number still on the screen, the call interrupted by the doctor’s entrance. You can feel him look over at you, but you don’t tear your eyes from your phone screen. You can’t deal with the look you know will be on his face. He’s going to refuse it. He might even stop taking all of his meds, soon.

The doctor glances down at her chart. She bites the inside of her lip, barely enough to notice in the dim light of the room.

“We can keep you stable,” she says. “But long-term improvement is unlikely, considering your situation.”

“If that’s the case, and it’s all the same, I’d rather just go home,” he says. His voice is soft. Tired. “I’d be a lot more comfortable there.”

“I’ll stay with him,” you offer. It comes out too fast. Everything is going either too fast or too slow and nothing’s working the way it should.

“I mean, I can’t force you to stay or go,” the doctor says. She flips through her chart one more time, then looks back up at you both. “But I strongly suggest you let us admit you, and if you do decide to leave, you’re going to have to sign some paperwork saying you chose to of your own free will and it could effect whether you can get any hospice treatment covered in the future.”

He sighs heavily. The mask fogs a little, and you can barely see the downturn of his mouth as it clears.

“Okay,” he whispers. “Do what you think is best.”

“All right,” she says. “We’ll get you ready and wheel you up to your room.”

* * *

 

It takes almost another hour to get everything ready and settled, but finally, you’re set up in a single room with the TV playing softly overhead. He has a window. At least he can still see the outside, even if it is just the tops of the buildings along the skyline. Since he’ll be here by himself, they set him up beside it so he can see it.

When you’re finally alone again, you send off a quick text to Kyle, Lola, and Cricket to let them know where you are and that you won’t be home tonight. Chayton’s shoulders are slumped, his hands loose on his stomach as he gazes vacantly out the window.

“Are you okay?” you ask.

“I’m tired,” he says. “And it’s too late. I’m too far gone to fix it. And I just want to go home.”

You take his hand, soft and shaky. Your voice cracks when you say, “I promise I’ll make them respect your DNR if something happens while you’re here.”

“The doctor has a copy in my chart,” he says.

A few moments of silence.

“Please call your parents,” you say.

He sighs.

“Okay.”

* * *

You step out of the room to give Chayton some privacy and walk down to the vending machine to see if you’re lucky enough to find a vegan snack. You are, and there’s a brand of cookies you like, so you buy a package and walk back to his room, back down the hall again, then three times more. When you get back you gently knock on the door and peek in. Your phone is in his hands as he stares blankly at the screen.

“Well?” you ask.

He looks up at you. His eyes are heavy. “They’re both going to try to get some time off the next few days so they can come up,” he says.

“Good,” you whisper, and you rest your hand on the back of his head. He flops back against his pillow, pinning you to the bed. You don’t pull away.

“Why are you so worried about them coming to visit you?” you ask. “Like you said earlier, they want to see you. Even if your mom is stupid about some things.”

“I know,” he says. He clenches the hand with the IV in the back, loosens it again.

“They don’t know about you,” he suddenly blurts. Your hand twitches behind his head and your stomach drops.

“What?” Is he ashamed of you? You’ve been together two years! How could his parents not know yet? He flinches at the hurt in your voice.

“We rarely talk and when we do it’s never about anything important,” he says. “I wasn’t hiding you, March. Nobody asked me if I was in a relationship and I knew it would just piss my mom off because my last relationship before you was with a woman, and then my dad would have to jump in and mediate again and…” He sighs. “And I have so many more bullshit excuses, but none of them make it okay. I’m sorry, March.”

“Do you _want_ them to know about me?” The question is timid, nervous, because you want to respect his wishes, but… what if he says ‘no?’ What if he never wants them to know? What if he dies a month from now and to them you never existed? He never talks about them and you’ve never met them and meeting them has never been on your radar, but that thought still burns like the concrete in summer, slow and rising.

“I do, but…” He doesn’t finish his sentence.

“But?”

“I don’t know,” he says. He wipes at his face roughly with his hands. “I’m sorry, March, I love you, I --” His voice catches and he falls into a coughing fit, wet and barking. You wrap your arm around his shoulder and rest your other hand on his arm, easing him up so he can break up some of the gunk in his chest.

“Don’t worry about it now,” you say. “We have time.”

 _We have time_ , you say, but you’re not sure if you believe it.

* * *

 

You stay the night in the hospital room stretched out over a chair and your back needs something soft for a while, so you go back home for a few hours’ nap. When you go back, it’s with Kyle and a couple of books, a half-empty sketchpad, and some pencils.

“When are your parents coming by?” you ask.

“They already did,” he says. He’s staring hard out the window. His shoulders under the blue and white hospital gown are sharp and thin. He’s lost so much weight. “They were here for a few hours while you were back at home.”

“I wish you had called me,” you murmur, but you don’t have the energy to fight, because this is most likely it, right? You’re approaching the end. You don’t want anything to hurt any more than it has to.

“I know,” he says. “I should have. I’m starting to regret it now. And I’m sorry.”

“Are they coming back?”

“Not soon, unless things take a turn for the worse again.”

You frown. “Was it a bad visit?”

He finally looks at you and shakes his head. “No,” he says. “No. It was fine. They just live far away and it’s hard for them to get time off --”

“I’m pretty sure if they explain the situation --”

“March.”

Kyle rests his hand on your shoulder and you look up at him, behind you. You’d forgotten he was in the room with you.

“I love my parents, but I’m not close with them like you were with your mom,” Chayton says. “A couple hours visit every month or two is more than enough for us. Please stop pushing it.”

You open your mouth and start to lean forward, but Kyle’s hand tightens on your shoulder.

“Okay,” you say, but you know you’re going to be screaming at Kyle later tonight at home, because he’s the only one who will understand.

Kyle hands Chayton the sketchbook. “Each of us did a couple in there for you,” he says. “And of course, the rest of the blank pages are for you. Sketch, doodle, pull them out and make a paper airplane.”

Chayton chuckles. You don’t smile.

* * *

 

“I don’t know how much longer I can do this, Kyle.”

You’re pacing, nervous, twitchy, back and forth across the bedroom. Kyle sits curled up around a pillow in the beanbag chair Chayton gave you all those years ago, a little more worn, now, and patched up in a few places. He sits up straight, staring at you intently.

“You’re not breaking up with him, are --”

“Oh my God, _no_!” you cry. You whirl on him like he’s suggesting you murder a puppy. “No! Kyle, what kind of heartless asshole do you think I _am_?”

“I don’t, I don’t.” He throws up his hands like he’s about to defend himself from a blow. “What do you mean, ‘you don’t know how much longer you can do this,’ then?”

“I mean…” You growl in frustration and knock your shoulder against the wall in an attempt to get some of the tension out. It hurts, instead. “I just mean…” But you keep trailing off, because you don’t know _what_ you mean. You don’t know how much longer you can deal with the stress and the pain and the overbearing sense of looming loss without losing your mind. You don’t know how much longer you can handle Chayton’s excuses about his parents without snapping on him, because you want to support him, you want to understand, but you _don’t_.

You don’t know how much longer you can keep yourself together without cracking down the middle.

But you can’t find the words to say any of that, so you collapse on your bed and bury your face in your hands, and it isn’t until Kyle’s sitting beside you helping you wipe your face that you realize you’re sobbing.

Your face is still ruddy and your eyes still red and your hands still sweaty even after you take a quick, too-cold shower. You finally change into some clean clothes -- you haven’t since Chayton first went to the hospital two days ago -- and you think you should feel better, but you don’t. You just feel less dirty.

* * *

 

A week and a half later, Chayton’s insurance approves hospice care. He barters them down to an in home care nurse who will come three to four times a week so he can maintain some sense of independence. You stay with him the rest of the time, curled up by his side all day and night, because he’s too tired to do anything but lie in bed and watch movies all day.

His cough gets worse. His skin gets paler and colder. His voice and movements get weaker. He loses more weight. And then, one beautiful day, when the clean, white snow falls softly outside his window, he starts to wheeze, a gasping, heaving, wet sound you’ve never heard before. He gasps softly, weakly. His whole body trembles.

“I love you, March, okay?” he suddenly whispers.

That’s when you know.

“I love you, too,” you whisper back. “I always will.”

You kiss his forehead and lean over him to grab your phone on the other side of the mattress. You dial Kyle’s number.

“Please answer,” you murmur. Chayton’s chest shudders and you sit up beside him, pulling his head into your lap. You curl your empty hand tightly into his. “Please, please, please.” You chant like it’s a prayer to anyone who might still be listening. Finally, he picks up.

“March?”

“It’s here,” you choke. “It’s time. I need you here. Please. I can’t do this alone.”

“I’m on my way.” There’s a shuffle and a clatter and sudden chatter and you ask,

“Are you at work?”

“I was. This is more important. I’m on my way. Please tell him to try to hold on. I want to say goodbye, for real. I’m calling Cricket and Lola now.”

* * *

 

Lola arrives first, halfway to her shift at the junkyard when she gets the call and makes a detour to you. Cricket arrives ten minutes later, and Kyle another ten after that. Thirty minutes have passed since your initial phone call, and Chayton’s face is pale and ashen. His breathing shakes, uneven and wet. His chest spasms. His head shudders. It rests in your lap under your knees, his sweat soaking through your jeans, but it doesn’t matter, nothing matters but this, and maybe after it’s over, nothing will ever matter again.

“Should we call --” Cricket starts.

“Don’t you dare,” Chayton chokes. Even now, he manages a weak smile. “I have a DNR and you are going to honor it.”

Cricket looks down at zir hands, curled tightly on zir knees where zie kneels at Chayton’s side. Lola is beside him, Kyle near his head, next to you, on the other side.

Movies and books made death seem so fast, so clean. But it lasts, and it lasts, and Chayton holds on and holds on and _suffers_ , and your hands curl tight in both of his, hugging them close to his chest, like you can fix it, like if you will it hard enough, everything will be okay, and you’ll go back, and he’ll smile at you and ask you if you can keep up with him and call you Art School, and you’ll get to do it again, better this time, and he’ll catch his medication slip, and he won’t get sick.

The seconds pass like minutes and the minutes pass like hours. You say ‘I love you’ more than too many times, but it’s still not enough, because soon he’ll never be able to hear you say it again. His hand shakes in yours, cold and clammy, your other hand woven tightly into his hair. Cricket’s hands are on Chayton’s knees and Lola is curled up with her head on his leg like a mother cat trying to protect a kitten. Kyle watches, silent, eyes glassy and hands tight and shaking in his lap.

Chayton’s breathing grows more staggered. He gasps, thick and wet, and you start to try to sit him up so he can breathe better, but he shakes his head and pushes back against you. You stop and leave him where he is.

For seconds that barely add up to a minute but that last for eons, Chayton shivers, coughs, gasps and wheezes, and finally, his body relaxes, and he breathes out, and he stills. You collapse forward onto him, your hands curled tightly in the hem of his shirt and his chin digging into your cheek. His chest is still. No breath brushes your face. For a few moments, everything is silent, and then you sob, so heavy it could snap you in two.

“Call the home care nurse,” you choke. Kyle shifts beside you and his footsteps fade off into the kitchen.

You half crawl over Chayton’s body, curling up around him, like maybe, if you try hard enough, you can infuse some of your life from your own body back into his. But you can’t. Your shoulders shake and your throat spasms so hard with your uneven sobbing it knocks the air out of you, and your head pounds and spins with the lack of proper air, but it doesn’t matter because at least you _can_ still breathe. Cricket’s sudden, sharp sob breaks the uneven heaving of your own, and Lola crawls up beside you, gently closing Chayton’s eyes and pressing a kiss to his forehead.

“I love you,” you whisper. “I’m glad it doesn’t hurt anymore.”

But even though he won’t hurt anymore, you’re going to hurt forever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come visit me at [indecentpause](http://indecentpause.tumblr.com/) on tumblr for short stories, excerpts, info on WIPs and finished projects, and more!


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I'm a day late! I was gone almost all day yesterday and by the time I got home I just crashed. Here it is, finally!

Only a handful of people attend the funeral. You have a feeling you and your friends were only invited because you were in Chayton’s address book, because in all the time you’d been together, he’d never introduced you to his parents. Maybe he never mentioned you at all, even as a friend, even at the end. What do you say? Do you say anything? He was your boyfriend. You loved him. You _still_ love him, present tense. You will forever.

The only even slightly respectable thing you own is a black polo and a pair of black slacks. You don’t even have a matching jacket. You can’t afford to go out and buy anything new, but you don’t think Chayton would want you to, anyway. He never placed much value on those things, did he? Anything you might spend on new clothes just for the funeral he’d rather you donate somewhere.

His parents are nice enough, if a little cold. His dad’s mouth is set in a hard, thin line and his eyes are red and watery. His mother spends the entire time sobbing into his shoulder. They have no idea who you are. It’s just you, a few aunts and uncles and a cousin, and Kyle and the others. Chayton really did keep to himself, didn’t he?

Chayton’s parents get his ashes. You have no right to protest. You ask them if you can go along with them when they scatter them in the forest. It’s illegal, but nobody actually cares as long as you don’t get caught.

“How did he know you?” His mom asks.

Your words catch in your throat and your hand curls loosely under your chin.

“He was my best friend,” you say, and even though it’s not the whole truth, it’s also nowhere near a lie. “He was… he was one of the most important people in the world to me.”

“What did you say your name was?”

You open your eyes. “March.”

She doesn’t hold out her hand. Instead, she draws you into a tight hug. She’s barely half an inch shorter than you.

“Thank you for taking care of him for us,” she whispers. “He never mentioned any names, but as it got closer to the end and he finally told us, he said his friends had been taking good care of him. If you were his best friend, I assume that includes you.”

Finally, you wrap your arms back around her shoulders, and for the first time all day, you can finally cry, even though it’s silent, even though it’s bare.

“Yeah,” you whisper. “It does.”

* * *

 

Afterward you go out to Chayton’s favorite coffee shop, the one underneath the train stop with all the fairy lights hanging from the ceiling. You get coffee and sandwiches and Kyle makes you get one, too, even though you say you’re not hungry, because you haven’t eaten much since Chayton died.

For hours, you share stories. You talk in detail about your first night out with him. Lola talks about how she met him, at the copier store making flyers for an art show where he was, too, buying plastic sheeting for cheap throwaway stencils. Cricket talks about the disaster zir hair ended up the first time Chayton tried to help dye it.

“I feel kind of shitty hanging out and laughing like this,” you finally say, even though each laugh also comes with tears and there’s a lot of crying, too. Kyle wraps his arm around your shoulder and jostles you a little.

“He wouldn’t want us to mourn any more than we have to,” he says, even though his voice catches. “I’d bet you everything I own he’s already tagging up heaven as we speak.”

“I’ll bet God loves it,” Lola sniffles. She wipes at her face with a napkin and holds it to her nose for a moment. “Get some color on all that white and silver up there.”

“There’s probably a breakdancing robot on the pearly gates already,” Cricket says.

* * *

 

Even though Oak Park is out of the way and in the wrong direction, you stop there just as the sun starts to set, at the corner where the old bookstore used to be. There are still cars everywhere, but it’s so cold right now, most everyone is indoors. Nobody is out wandering around behind the buildings.

You adjust the straps of Chayton’s backpack over your shoulder.

“Anyone coming with me?”

Cricket, Kyle, and Lola all let you lead the way. You take them down the street and around the corner to what remains of Chayton’s posters on the wall behind the Whole Foods. When you paste, your hands move smooth and sure, never as confident as Chayton’s were, but with the practiced ease that only comes with doing something hundreds of times over.

You slash a few diagonal lines through the poster in either direction, like Chayton did that first night, then slap on one of his last stickers, paste over it, and cut an ‘x’ through it. You take a step back. Lola wraps her arm around your shoulder. Then Kyle wraps his around your other one, pulling in Cricket on the other side.

“It looks just like his did,” Lola whispers. There were two of these alien posters left. This blue one and a pink one you pinned up in your bedroom. That one is yours. She kisses the top of your head and you all drop your arms. You salute the poster and gather up all the materials, quick and quiet, like Chayton taught you.

You linger behind for a few extra moments, looking at the new, clean, bright white poster in comparison to the yellowed and browned tatters left around the wall from the old ones you put up all those years ago. It’s amazing anything is left of them.

“I love you,” you whisper. Your friends are at the corner now, waiting for you by the end of the building, giving you space. A car drives by and you duck your head down to obscure your face.

“Goodbye,” you say. You kiss your fingers and press them to the still damp poster, then turn to follow your friends back into the city.

 

**The End**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that brings us to the end of One More Time (With Feeling). I know it was sadder than my usual stories, but I hope I was still able to bring you a satisfying ending.
> 
> Thanks for sticking with me.
> 
> On Mondays I'll still be uploading The Art of Losing Touch while I figure out what to do on Thursdays.
> 
> <3 you all. :)


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